My Dead Best Friend Showed Up
by can-it-fly
Summary: Two things were different the day the helicarriers fell, and those two things made a hell of a difference for Captain America when he made a plan to save his best friend. / In which we have a nice quick happy ending to Cap 2, because I wanted to write something pleasant.
1. Prologue (April 6, 2014)

_*flails arms* I was suffering from burnout on my big fic and my brain wouldn't let this drop so have a post-Cap 2 AU in which Bucky Barnes doesn't have to be on the run._

 _Timeline assumes that the helicarriers fell on April 4th, 2014, the day the movie was released._

 _You might notice some repeated headcanons and plot devices between this fic, "Your Spirit is Untainted" and another one (the big one, which will be published sometime in the next six months if it doesn't kill me first). These similarities are due to a lack of imagination by yours truly, in her quest for nice tidy plots._

 _Only general warnings for this fic: descriptions of torture, violence and mental conditioning. Depictions of reactions of trauma. Nothing big._

 _Updates Monday nights EST._

 _Image from here:_ _[bit] [.ly]_ _/1QZO60g_

* * *

 _This chapter is brought to you by a history geek, though obviously there is no way you can tell._

* * *

The man in blue and red had said two words: "Benjamin" and "Chase". A name – Benjamin Chase.

A name meant a person, meant a target.

He had watched the man close his eyes and whisper the words, choke them out before his muscles slacked and he died.

Died of gunshots, of broken ribs and punctured lungs and punches to the face by a metal arm.

 _He'd_ killed the man. Dragged him out of the river and watched him die, and left before anyone found him.

The sun had disappeared twice since, and he'd found a little food for energy but didn't dare stop moving. He didn't have a map, didn't know where he was or where he was going. Where the target Benjamin Chase was.

He found himself standing across from a building with open doors. The building with the people walking in and out – "library", it said. They gave out books but he saw computers inside, and he could use it. He'd seen his handlers use them, and the scientists too.

Whoever Benjamin Chase was, the man he'd dragged out of the river wanted him to find him.

He found the computer in the darkest part of the library and clicked around, exploring it – he'd never used one before – until he noticed the printed instructions nearby: "To create a written document, double-click on the icon with a blue 'W' to open Microsoft Word. To play a game, click on the Windows button on the lower-left-hand corner and open the folder named 'Games'. To browse the internet, double-click on the icon with a blue 'e' to open Internet Explorer."

"Internet" – he'd heard the word before.

The screen changed, opening an application, and he typed the words "Benjamin Chase" into the area with the blinking bar; but there were too many results, too many men with that name to find whichever one the man in the river – the man he'd tried to kill – wanted him to find.

He clicked further, and time fell away as it never had before as he followed different – "links", they were named – and searched through the results.

This wasn't working. He'd found a site that would tell him the addresses – sometimes even phone numbers – of the possible targets but there were still too many.

Maybe the target was close – but then he didn't know where he was. He opened a new – it was called a tab – and searched "location" but that didn't tell him where he was. "Map": a further nothing. "Where am I": Alexandria, Virginia, United States of America.

He clicked on the Google Map result to get his bearing, see the locations around him – states, counties, neighborhoods, towns and one large city.

The man had said another name – he said it was _his_ name. James Buchanan Barnes. The first two words sounded familiar but he knew they weren't his.

He searched "James Buchanan" and found it was a president. A useless president, the worst in his office. Well, he thought, he would decide that for himself.

The list: George Washington (the best); John Adams (okay); Thomas Jefferson (good); James Madison (good); James Monroe (good); John Adams – a different one? – (very good); Andrew Jackson (powerful but bad); Martin Van Buren (useless); William Harrison (dead); John Tyler (bad); James Polk (okay); Zachary –

Harrison.

That name was also familiar.

– Taylor (also dead); Millard Fillmore (bad); Franklin Pierce (bad); James Buchanan –

Yes, he could understand why Buchanan was the worst.

– (the worst); Abraham Lincoln (very good); Andrew Johnson (very bad); Ulysses Grant –

Why was Lincoln good if he started a war? But he was shot _after_ the war ended, and he didn't think these people way back when understood how war worked – you killed people while the war was happening, not _after_ it ended – but whatever. And another thing: why would anyone who killed people be _good_?

– (good but also inept); Rutherford Hayes (okay); James Garfield (also dead? if these men were important why did they keep being killed – and Lincoln had been killed too...); Chester Arthur (good); Grover Cleveland (good); –

Cleveland. Another name he recognized.

– Benjamin Harri –

That was it.

It wasn't "Benjamin Chase", it was "Benjamin Harrison".

Then what was Chase?

He continued with the presidents because he was curious. He knew that feeling should be getting him punished but there wasn't anyone here – the man had been dying –

 _You killed him, you shot him, why would you kill Steve?_

The man had given him a name. He would find the name. He would finish the presidents first, though.

Benjamin Harrison (good intentions but ineffective, like his namesake); Grover Cleveland (again?); William McKinley (another war, and then he was dead – what was _with_ these guys); Theodore Roosevelt (another name he recognized – there was a bear? anyway, very good); William Taft –

There was someone with that name, too. There was a Benjamin and a William and a James and a – a –

Not Grover, though Cleveland _was_ the middle name. A girl. A girl whose name started with "R".

In any case. William Taft (good but ate too much); Woodrow Wilson (good but uptight, got sick towards the end); Warren Harding (also dead but this was illness – and he was bad anyway); Calvin Coolidge (bad economics but awesome guy – he hated the KKK and Bucky did too, and he hated lynching and gave Indians citizenship –

Who the hell was "Bucky"? And why did he like Coolidge so much, and what was he –

He shook his head. His mind was mixing him and this "Bucky" guy up. _He_ didn't care about Silent Cal, Bucky did. Whoever that was. Maybe that was the man in the river.

Coolidge (good, quiet); Herbert Hoover (bad); Franklin Roosevelt –

"FDR", they called him. The man who talked through the radio, who'd made his father happy when he closed the banks, who had the alphabet soup and hated the Supreme Court. Who sat in a wheelchair, and his wife went into the mines and the factories instead of him.

The man who'd started another war, and yet he knew this president was one of the best.

But the site said he'd died. He hadn't died – right? He was still alive, even though the war was winding down he wouldn't _die_ , he'd never –

"Roosevelt's health seriously declined during the war years, and he died three months into his fourth term."

Oh. 1945. It was barely into 1945, though...

Maybe some time had passed. That was understandable.

But there were all these after – Truman he knew, he'd voted for him in '44 as vice president, and Eisenhower – General Eisenhower, Ike – and Jack Kennedy was a submariner – but these guys... Johnson and Nixon and Ford and Carter –

 _Carter, you know Carter. Peggy Carter._

 _Stupid_ , he thought, _this is a different Carter. She's English, I'm American._

He was Russian. He knew Russian, he thought in – okay, not Russian. He didn't think in any particular language, but he remembered that he was supposed to be Russian. Soviet. Whatever the difference was.

But these were his presidents – he'd voted for FDR after all – and they were American. He was American.

He felt like he was drowning with all these things he somehow knew – how did he know them? – and he was getting a headache. _Back to the map_ , he told himself.

The map said he was in Alexandria, across the river from the capital of Washington, DC. He clicked on its link and reviewed its divisions: wards and neighborhoods. One of those neighborhoods was Chevy Chase – "Chase".

There was also one in Maryland, next to it.

He returned to the site that told him where the people were, and put "Benjamin Harrison" in and restricted the search to DC and MD.

Nothing. He wanted to punch the computer screen but stopped himself.

 _Unnecessary violence is not tolerated_ , someone said in his head. _It wastes good weapons and soldiers. Do not act out, Asset._

That word "asset" made him so much angrier all by itself. He hated it.

Okay. Back to the names. He knew there were three presidents he had to know, and one of them had an extra name: "Barnes".

He searched "James Buchanan Barnes" and –

– and –

He switched off the screen to look at his reflection, then back on again to compare it against the pictures. The same face.

 _Your name is James Buchanan Barnes._

The name "Barnes" sounded right after each of the presidents' names. The man wanted him to find Benjamin Harrison Barnes, but not to kill him? What was he supposed to do if not kill him?

James Barnes had a page on that site with the presidents – Wikipedia – too, and it said he was "survived by three younger siblings: William, Rebecca and Benjamin. All three boys were named after presidents (Buchanan, Taft and Harrison, respectively) and Rebecca's middle name was Cleveland, though Grover Cleveland had no known female relatives named Rebecca."

Yeah, because their parents liked the name "Rebecca" but if she'd been a boy they would've named her "Grover", which Bucky always reminded her about when she complained that she was the only girl –

Oh.

Bucky. Buchanan.

That was a _really_ stupid nickname. At least William got "Will" and Rebecca "Reba" and Benjamin "Ben", but he had to get "Bucky". And then Steve had shortened it further to "Buck" – cue all the "worth a Buck" jokes.

Oh.

Steve.

That was the man in the river, on the ship in the air; the one he'd fought, the one who'd given him his brother's name as he lay dying.

He'd killed Steve.

He couldn't think of that. Steve had told him where his brother was, he wanted him to find him. Get away from – from the handlers.

Steve had been famous. He was in the Army, though he shouldn't have been because he was too small. Then he'd gotten bigger, and he was a –

"childhood best friend of Steve Rogers (Captain America)"

There it was.

He found a picture and confirmed that yes, he'd killed Steve Rogers. His best friend.

Shouldn't he have remembered him, then, if he was his friend, before he shot him? Before he'd punched him into a bloody pulp? But he had – he'd stopped. Steve had refused to fight him and he'd fallen into the river – the Potomac – and Bucky had pulled him out.

But nobody could survive four gunshots, or the broken ribs that would puncture his lungs. But Steve had before, in '31; he'd coughed so hard during a bout of pneumonia that he'd broken two ribs and punctured his lung. He'd been shot before, too – by Nazis, by Hydra. He'd been fine from those.

This was different. The Asset didn't leave his targets alive.

He couldn't remember whether Steve had _been_ a target, though.

 _Kill him. Stop him from ruining our plans and kill him._

Yup. Steve had been a target.

One bullet in his arm, one in his back and another two through his leg and into his chest. The ones before, during the war, had been flesh wounds. Never hit anything vital. This time they had.

He'd killed Steve.

He couldn't think of that. He had to find his brother.

Why would Steve tell him where his brother was if Bucky had killed him? His job – the _Asset's_ job – was to kill people. Steve had to know it was too dangerous to send him there.

He wouldn't kill Ben. He wouldn't kill Ben.

He still didn't have independent confirmation that he was James Barnes, after all. All those memories could be fake. The appearance could be a coincidence. Captain America could've been wrong.

Independent confirmation – Ben would give him that.

He put the address into the search bar and found directions – that was for a car, he wanted _walking_ directions – and stared at them till he thought he would remember them.

He got mixed up a few times but the location stuck in his head: Chevy Chase, Maryland.

There was a car in the driveway and the door was blue.

He shouldn't enter the front door. There should be another entrance, another door that was unlocked. It was there but not unlocked.

Okay. He should wait.

A man opened the door; he didn't say anything, just stared right back at him.

This wasn't Ben.

This man was old.

Finally he said, "Bucky?"

There was that name again. Independent confirmation, even if this wasn't Benjamin.

"Uh..."

The man looked him up and down and his gaze stopped at the left arm, the metal one.

"Sweet Mary."

The man looked back at his face, his eyes, but he couldn't hold the gaze. Looking into a handler's eyes was like asking for a beating.

This man was a new handler –

But Steve had said that Ben was here.

This man wasn't Ben. What had he done with –

"Oh, no – _shit_ , uh... can you put the knife down?"

– not Ben, he hurt Ben –

"Stop."

He stopped.

"Put the knife away."

He put the knife he held back into his pocket.

"Actually, no. Y'know what, give it to me."

Take out the knife, hold it out.

He was an asset. He couldn't let his handler know that he felt things.

The man who wasn't Ben took the knife. "Come inside."

He walked.

He would usually wait in the kitchen, away from the rest of the house. But this house – the kitchen was in full view of the other rooms. He looked around, trying to figure out where he should go.

There were four pictures on the wall, three in color.

He'd shot Steve four times, three fatal. But how could this man know about that?

"Okay, so, um... food or sleep?"

 _What?_

The man looked him over again and said, "Sleep first. Take your shoes and your jacket off and lay down on one of the couches and sleep. Okay? – er, understood?"

He nodded. He understood.

"Good. We'll... figure out what to do tomorrow."

He had orders: sleep.

He slept, though he couldn't remember what that was like.


	2. April 6–7, 2014

Oh God.

Ben couldn't sleep. He _wouldn't_ sleep. He'd promised his brother – his _big brother_ , who'd been dead for seventy years – that they'd figure things out the next day but that was a lie. A straight-up lie.

He had to find Steve, and that meant finding his address. But SHIELD had probably put him up under a false identity...

He paced in the kitchen, thinking, until he realized the information had probably been leaked on the internet already, found somewhere in the SHIELD file dump.

"Captain America address" – an apartment in DuPont Circle, just like Steve had said that one time they'd bumped into each other on the Metro. It had been an awkward few minutes: Steve had been trying to get somewhere and somehow even though Ben was eighty-four he still felt like the awkward kid babbling to his big brother's friend.

Ben grabbed his keys and –

No, he couldn't leave Bucky here. What if he woke up?

He scribbled a note – "Gone out, be back by morning. Don't leave the house or open the windows. If you remember how to make yourself cereal go ahead. Put the milk jug back in the refrigerator when you're done using it. Use a spoon when you eat." – and placed it gently on his brother's chest. He could've sworn Bucky opened an eye for a second but that was probably just the lighting.

Ben's oldest daughter had wanted him to trade in his car, and his house, for a retirement home but he'd fought off her thinly-veiled suggestions. He rarely used the car and only kept his license for emergencies but he was still a good driver, and proved it by staying calm as he drove down Connecticut Avenue.

DuPont Circle, and then a few blocks to the southeast. He checked that the building was right and then took the elevator to the right floor. It was a smaller building and there were only six units per level, and Steve's was easy to find.

Oh, wait. Steve was still in the hospital.

Ben took his pad of paper out and began to scribble another note –

"You looking for someone?"

A woman – blonde, medium height, good looking. Carrying a heavy-looking box out of her next-door apartment; gun in a holster at her hip. Maybe the internet had gotten the apartment number wrong and she was FBI, clearing out his place?

No, but she didn't have a badge.

"Yeah, uh... I dunno if you know, but –"

"Captain America lived there. Yeah, I know."

" 'Lived'?"

She shrugged. "His address got leaked. He'll probably move."

"Oh."

"What're you, another fan? He's still in the hospital, you can send a card," she grumbled.

"I'm not, I'm an old – I, uh, knew him. Back in the day. I need to talk to him."

"Is it urgent?"

"Yeah."

"He's at American –"

"I can't go to the hospital. D'you have his number?"

"Why would I have his number?"

"Gun but no badge, and you're moving out. You must've been in SHIELD. Guard duty? So you had to have his number."

The woman looked him up and down. "You want to give me your name?"

"I can't. But he'll know my voice."

"That's not enough confirmation."

"Then ask him what red is. Before you put me on."

She raised an eyebrow and he added, "The answer is it's the best color that he can't see. He was colorblind. It was a joke. He hated it."

The woman shrugged, set down the box and pulled out her phone to dial a number. "Romanoff," she said after a long moment. "I need Cap's number – Okay, well then get me his – Yeah, I have someone here who wants to talk – Old, white, male, won't tell me his name, says he used to – I have a test question, don't worry. 'Kay, thanks."

She hung up and tapped the phone against her leg. "He lost his phone last week. My contact is getting the new number."

"Romanoff – the lady who's an Avenger."

"That's her."

The phone rang and she answered. "Captain Rogers. This is your neighbor. I have someone here who'd like to talk to you but first you need to answer a question. What is red?"

She nodded at the answer and handed the phone over.

"Steve."

"Ben. What is it?"

"You, uh..." He looked at the agent – ex-agent – and she shook her head; she wouldn't leave. Inside jokes and hints it would be. "You gave someone my address?"

"Really? Who?"

"The worst one."

Ben heard Steve freeze on the other end, stop breathing. He took a long moment to reply: "No I didn't."

"Um, well, I don't think they'd have found me any other way."

"You mean he doesn't –"

"A little bit. Not much. Not enough."

"Okay. Are you all right, did he –"

"No, I'm fine. Can you tell me what the hell is going on?"

"Yeah, I, uh... I'm sorry, Ben, I can't tell you over the phone. You went to my neighbor?"

He glanced back at the woman. "Yeah. I was gonna leave a note at your door otherwise. She called someone named Romanoff and –"

"Okay. That explains it. Leave your address under the door and in the morning I'll –"

"No. Steve. I – I heard a little about your injuries. Paid a dollar to a nurse." He hoped Steve would remember the old pun involving Bucky's nickname. "You barely got out of there alive. I'm a doctor – or, I used to be. You should know better than anyone that doctors are usually right when they tell you to rest."

"Ben," he said calmly, "a week ago I fell a hundred feet onto stone floor. I heal quicker –"

"You got shot four times. Three badly. Rest. You can find my address in the white pages when you're discharged."

"That won't be for a few days. _Ben_ –"

"I can handle it. I was a corpsman in Korea, I saw my share of firefights. I know how to protect myself."

"I'll send someone by –"

" _Steve_."

"– who can help. I'm serious, Ben. And I didn't give him your address."

"I didn't have any trouble –"

"That doesn't mean it's safe. I'm not taking any chances. Can you ask Agent Thirteen what her name is?"

"Uh, okay. What's your name?"

She shook her head. "He doesn't want to know."

"Ma'am, this is Steve Rogers. I was a lot younger than him and I still knew him well enough growing up to know not to tell him that. It's an invitation for him to pester you till you give it up."

"Okay then." She took the phone and said, "Sharon Carter. Yes, that's why I was on your detail. No, that's not why Romanoff told you to ask me out. I'm not happy you destroyed the agency my aunt spent most of her life building but I get why you did it. Now, if Romanoff thinks I'm trustworthy enough to give your friend's number to then is that enough for you to tell me who this guy is?"

Carter scowled at the answer Steve gave her. "I'm not going to do that. Not if you don't tell me what's going on." Another few muted words through the speaker; she sighed and hung up.

"He'll call back in a minute," she told Ben, and she was right. She answered with "Carter" and listened to Steve speak. "All right," she said finally, "I understand," and handed the phone back to Ben.

"Yeah?"

"Ben. Tell her."

"What? But –"

"You need someone to keep an eye on the situation and I'm not gonna put the guy here with me in that position. She's more than –"

"You – you didn't even know her _name_ until a minute ago –"

"I'm betting on the last name. And someone I trust vouched for her."

"That's not enough for –"

"Ben, _you_ called _me_. This is how I can help until I get out of the hospital, okay? I didn't give him your address. I have no idea how he found you, and you said it didn't seem like he remembered enough to find you on his own. Which means there's something we don't know about and I don't like that."

Ben sighed; he'd forgotten that Steve liked to tell people what to do. "All right, fine," he said slowly. "How long are you going to be in the hospital?"

"Just a couple more days. Sit tight, don't tell Kate – _Carter_ – until you're clear of the apartment building."

"Why?"

"Bugs. I gotta go."

Steve hung up and Ben handed the phone back to Carter. "This is my last box," she told him. "I just need to finish putting everything in the car. Do you have a garage?"

"Yeah. A double."

"Good, I can park it in there. Let's go." She picked the box back up and walked away, towards the stairs. Ben followed, taking the elevator back down.

Steve hadn't asked once how Bucky was doing – if he was injured, or how much he remembered.

That made Ben even more worried.

* * *

Sharon Carter was confused. Sure, there would still be some people around who knew Captain Rogers from the 30s and 40s, but the name "Ben" didn't ring any bells and she had no idea why either of them would've been so freaked out by whoever the "worst one" was.

Still, he'd asked her to protect him so that she would do until someone explained to her what the hell was going on. Which would happen soon; she would insist on that.

They drove through Northwest and into Chevy Chase, Maryland – she followed him from a few cars back – and parked in the garage of a moderately-sized house for the neighborhood – which meant huge by DC standards.

"I was a doctor," Ben said with a shrug when she commented on it. "Worked in the county, bought this place before the prices skyrocketed."

"Okay. So, can you tell me now what's going on?"

"Steve said he was betting on your family name. You're related to Peggy Carter, then?"

"Yeah."

"That makes this easier." He sighed. "My full name is Benjamin Harrison Barnes."

So this was one of James Barnes' brothers, then. Sharon had done a report about him in sixth grade, used her great-aunt's stories to describe the –

Wait.

James Buchanan was the worst president.

Barnes watched her make the connection and said, "Yeah. I was pretty surprised too when I found out he was alive. He showed up at my doorstep – oh, it must've been five hours ago."

"Oh – okay," she replied. "Does he know what –"

"He didn't even recognize me. He said Steve told him where I was but Steve says he never did. I have no idea what's going on but..."

"But what?"

They were still in the garage – the door to the house closed – but still Barnes spoke at a whisper. "His left arm is a prosthetic made of metal."

This time around took Sharon much less time to figure out what that meant. "Oh my God," she said. "But he – he was assumed dead when the helicarriers fell – and how would he – what did they _do_ to him?"

"I don't know," said Barnes grimly. "I figure this is why Steve decided to destroy SHIELD."

"Yeah, no kidding. Okay, so where is he?"

"Hopefully still sleeping on my couch."

Well, at least she wasn't confused anymore. Sharon would classify her emotions as more pissed, shocked and horrified than confused.

Ben unlocked the door into the house and showed her into the living room. He'd been right: his older brother was still asleep on the couch. Well, almost asleep, but Sharon wouldn't point out that they'd woken him up just by walking into the room.

Bucky Barnes.

The Winter Soldier.

One man she thought had died sixty-nine years ago and one she'd never believed existed.

Captain Rogers had told her over the phone that she owed him for spying on him for two years for Fury, but if he thought she owed him _this_ much he was clearly high on painkillers.

 _Turn the situation to your advantage, girl_ , Peggy whispered in her mind.

Sharon rubbed her temples and asked, "Okay. How did he act?"

"He was confused but if I told him to do something he'd do it, no questions asked."

"He say anything?"

"Just that Steve told him about me before he died. He was mumbling, I don't think he realized he was speaking out loud."

That got her attention. "He thinks he's dead?"

"Yeah. I figure he has some kind of induced memory loss and I know amnesia patients can get upset if you challenge what they remember so I didn't tell him differently. If he'd been ordered to kill Steve..."

She picked up his thoughts: "And he found out he was still alive he might try to finish the job."

She kept her gaze on the Soldier – she wouldn't think of him as another Barnes until she had proof he wasn't brainwashed, that the Sergeant was still in there – and noted that his eyes were still slightly open. Ben hadn't seen that which was good.

"I'll watch him till the morning. You go to sleep."

"Do you want anything? I have food..."

"Coffee. Black and strong."

"I'm a Marine, ma'am. I don't know any other kind."

If he was going to start rambling she'd have to shut him up. "Sooner rather than later, doc."

"Understood." He lifted a piece of paper off his brother's chest, walked into the kitchen and started a pot. Sharon sat down in a chair across from the Soldier and took the safety of her gun off.

His eyes were closed again, and she hoped this was one of those woke-up-briefly-with-no-memory-of-it things. Asleep he didn't look threatening, actually a bit silly – his mouth was open slightly, and he snored occasionally. Still, Sharon couldn't find much to laugh about while she watched that terrifying metal arm fall up and down on his chest as the world's most infamous assassin breathed.

This was going to be a long night.

Sharon was about ready to pass out when Barnes came down the stairs the next morning. "Morning," the old man said. "How're we doing?"

"Still asleep."

"And you?"

"I've had stakeouts that've lasted longer. I'll be fine."

"You need to rest," he told her. "And I'm a doctor, you really can't argue with me."

She stood up and stretched. "Make me some breakfast and I'll sleep on your other couch."

"There's a shower upstairs."

"I'm not that desperate yet."

Barnes smiled softly. "Oatmeal okay?"

"Sounds good."

She left the gun with Barnes; when her alarm went off three hours later she looked first to the other couch, and then to Ben. He shook his head to confirm what she'd seen: still asleep.

"It's been three days since SHIELD fell," he told her. "I don't think he's slept since then."

"Or at all, probably. I'm thinking they'd take him in and out of some kind of cryo freezing. Lack of sleep is pretty effective torture. Spend too much time awake –"

"– and you can suffer a psychotic break. I know. I saw it in med school."

"Exactly. What's the time?"

"Uh, almost noon."

"Okay. I'll call Cap again but I think he's still laid up."

Barnes sighed and turned back to his brother.

Wilson answered the phone, because it was actually his: "Hello?"

"Hi, Wilson. Can I talk to him?"

"He's with the doctor. I don't think it'll take long –"

"Hey wingman, who're you talking to?"

"– but Tony Stark is here with me so I'll have Steve call you back."

"Oh. Better just to put Tony on."

"You know him?"

"I'm a Carter, he's a Stark. Sure I know him."

Barnes looked up at her with confused look; she shrugged.

"Okay then. Here you go."

Preemptive action was always best when it came to Tony Stark, so she said immediately, "Hi Tony. How're you doing?"

"How am I doing? I didn't just lose my job, my career and my social life."

"You're right. I didn't sign away my job and my company and at least I _had_ a social life to begin with."

"Don't have it, can't lose it. So why do _you_ want to talk to Aunt Peg's old boyfriend?"

"I'm helping him with something."

"This something have anything to do with you working for me?"

"Privatized world security isn't high on my list of things I'd like to see right now. 'Sides, I have an interview with the CIA next week."

"You – did you miss the part where the US government has been compromised by Hydra?"

"Believe me, I didn't. I got minor injuries to prove it – I barely got out of the Triskelion alive. But there's these things called sovereign governments and they get pissy when you violate their jurisdictions."

"And the CIA doesn't do that?"

"At least they're honest about who they're doing it for. We've had this fight before, Tony, and I have better things to do with my time than debate with you. Tell Rogers to call me back when he's free."

"You can't be _that_ busy if –"

"I talked to you 'cuz otherwise you would've pestered Wilson till he told you that I'd called. And then your mind would go to the gutter because I was living next door to him –"

"You were _what_?"

"Fury wanted someone nearby in case something happened. Obviously, something did."

"Yeah. The Winter Soldier happened."

Sharon glanced over _at_ the Winter Soldier – his body was relaxed, his eyes underneath the lids moved in REM sleep and there was a little bit of spit running down his cheek – and asked Stark, "Have they found his body yet?"

"I haven't heard anything."

"Okay. Don't tell Rogers I called. He should stay in the hospital, I don't want him freaking out."

"What are you _doing_ for him?"

She sighed. "You don't want to know. I'm serious, I can't tell you, and don't take that as a challenge to find out. You owe me, remember. I'm calling in my favor. Give the phone back to Wilson, will you?"

Sharon didn't hear anything until Wilson said, "So what's going on?"

"How much do you know?"

"Only what I heard him say last night. Um..."

"We can't talk about it over the phone but I need you not to tell him that Stark knows something's up."

"You don't think he should know?"

"He _should_ , but given recent events I think he'd act impulsively. I heard a lot of stories growing up about him and the ones that stuck the most... were about this."

"Gotcha. Okay, I'll have him call you. Pretty sure the doc's gonna discharge him tonight or tomorrow."

"Okay. Bye."

* * *

Wilson called back a half-hour later and when Sharon picked up she was met with Steve Rogers' voice: "What's going on? What happened, has –"

"Our host got him to sleep last night before I got here and he hasn't woken up yet. When are you being discharged?"

"Tomorrow."

"Okay. Here's what we need: clean clothes – you look the same size, by the way – food and money."

In the kitchen making lunch, Ben opened his mouth in protest. Sharon held up hand and shook her head.

"We need four disposable phones. T-Mobile and from different stores. Have Wilson get people he knows to buy them. They probably know he's fighting Hydra with you so they won't ask questions.

"I've been told our host gets his groceries delivered but he can't change his orders so we need money to buy more. Cash. No one'll be surprised if you withdraw some because... you're you." It was a lame conclusion but Sharon supposed he understood what she meant: he was used to paper money and probably didn't trust the government not to screw with his accounts more than they already had.

"Buy the clothes with a debit card. Don't get too much and nothing too expensive. Try Target. We want it to look like you're gonna hunt down Hydra – which I'm assuming you _will_ be doing after this is done."

"That was the plan."

"Good. I heard they found your shield in the river – bring that too, just in case. You got all that?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Find the address in a physical white pages book."

She hung up before he could reply.

* * *

 _If you know the DC area you can tell that Steve lives in the DuPont Circle neighborhood. The rooftop chase ends on a building near the actual circle and Metro station...plus there's behind-the-scenes photos of them filming in the neighborhood._

 _T-Mobile doesn't store any user data or records of texts or calls, and didn't participate in the NSA's data collection program that was running up until last December – which is why Sharon chose their phones._


	3. April 8–9, 2014

The doctors discharged Steve the next morning and he spent most of the day getting the supplies together. Sam told him good luck, and to call when he and Carter had taken stock of the situation.

Steve took a very roundabout route to Ben Barnes' house that night, making sure he wasn't followed. He knocked on the back door and Carter answered.

Sharon Carter – she didn't look much like Peggy but she held herself in a similar way – looked him up and down and finally said, "Come in."

He left his bag on the kitchen counter and she led him down into the basement. "Both of the Barnes boys are sleeping. Before I tell you where your friend is" – she sat down in a living room area – "I need to interview you."

"About what?"

"What happened on the helicarriers. When he almost killed you."

"The key word being 'almost'."

"Shut up, sit down and tell me what happened." She pulled out her phone and set it on the coffee table between them. "Sharon Carter, interviewing Steve Rogers. Eleven PM, April eighth, two-thousand-fourteen. Walk me through the events of April fourth."

"This is official?"

"Not by a long shot. I'm unemployed. This is for when we sort the whole mess out with the government, which you are going to have to do to get him a pardon and trust me, _you want me helping you_ ," she added forcefully.

Carter sat back on her couch and glared at him. Finally Steve sighed and said, "I don't know what he was doing when we replaced the first two chips, but –"

"Names?"

"I don't know what Barnes was doing when Wilson and I replaced the first two chips in the command mainframe of the helicarriers. I heard he grounded Wilson but I didn't see anything. I got to the third mainframe and he – Barnes – was there on the deck."

"Did you say anything?"

He looked up, met her eyes. "I asked him not to make me do what I was going to do. I told him that people were going to die and I couldn't let that happen. And he just stared at me... like he was waiting for me to attack. So I did.

"We fought next to the mainframe and I got the right chip out, but then we fell onto a platform below it. Fought some more and then he fell again, onto the glass bottom that shielded the mainframe from attacks from below. I jumped after him, got the upper hand. I dislocated his shoulder and put him in a chokehold until he lost consciousness.

"He woke up after ten, fifteen seconds, and he shot me three times while I was getting back up to the mainframe but I still got the chip in. Hill told me to get out before she destroyed the carriers but I told her to fire."

Carter's frown deepened. "What happened after that?"

"Some piece of the helicarrier fell when the firing started, pinned him to the bottom surface where I'd left him. I got down there and lifted it off enough for him to get out."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"You could've just left him there and jumped out. Why did you give him the chance to –"

"Carter – he's my _best friend_. I couldn't leave him there to die."

"So you jeopardized the mission –"

"I didn't jeopardize _anything_. The mission was done – we replaced the chips, Hill had control of the carriers. Anything after that..."

She nodded. "Okay. What happened after he got free?"

"He started attacking me. I told him that he knew me, that he'd known me his whole life and he... that made him angry. I told him his name, I told him I wasn't gonna fight him. I told him he was my friend and he knocked me down and said that I was his mission. So I told him to finish it."

"And he didn't."

Steve shook his head. "Another piece of the carrier fell nearby, shifted the balance of the surface. I fell into the river. But he had stopped punching me _before_ that happened."

"And then?"

"And then I woke up and I was on a beach. And I think he was above me, looking down at me, but I barely remember anything. I was... I'd almost drowned."

"So you don't remember telling him about his brother, then."

"I didn't tell him – I wouldn't've told him, that's the stupidest thing I could've –"

"Keep your voice down. You did tell him – you said 'Benjamin' and then you said 'Chase'. Took him a couple days to figure out what you meant. He told me about it earlier today when I had him tell me his account of the helicarrier fight. I didn't want you two comparing notes, getting your stories straight." She held up a hand, as if anticipating that Steve would take issue with that. "The only accounts of what happened on the third helicarrier are from you and from him. I did this so your stories wouldn't be questioned.

"I said I would help. This is how I can think to help. And, by the way, he said he shot you four times."

"When was the first?"

"During the initial fighting."

"Oh. That one grazed. I didn't count it."

"I guess he did." She pressed the red record button on her phone and put it back in her pocket. "Okay. We're done with this. He's in the attic bedroom – this is a big house. Do you want to see him first or sleep?"

"You have to ask?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, I guess I don't. Let's go then."

"All right."

"He slept till last night," she told him as they walked back up the stairs. "Pretty disoriented but he recognized Ben, which I guess is progress. We made him eat and got him into the shower but when the hot water ran out he freaked out a little."

" 'A little'?"

"Let's just say I'm glad Ben calmed him down and got him a towel before I saw anything I wouldn't be able to _un_ -see. Anyway, then we got him into some clean clothes and I put him in the attic bedroom. He ate some food today, read a book. It's probably more fun to watch paint dry than listen to Ben try to get him to remember things."

They reached the second-floor staircase and ascended, revealing a branched second-story hallway; Carter took the path to the right as Steve asked her, "How much _does_ he remember?"

"It's mostly things from when he was a kid. Ben can't help with that, obviously. He was so much younger."

"Yeah, Ben was the baby of the family. Who's clothes?"

"An ex of mine's. I always keep a few sets of clothes around in case an agent has to crash at my place." She paused and corrected herself: " _Had_ to crash at the place that is no longer mine."

"I'm sorry, Carter."

"Don't be, I trained for this. I'm Special Service after all. All my stuff fits in my car. Anyway, Ben has a washer and dryer so we put what he was wearing through."

They reached a door at the end of the second-floor hallway and she unlocked it, revealing a narrow staircase.

"I brought what I could from my apartment too. Not much of it is mine and everything's a mess, though."

"I know. I heard Hydra tossing the place." She turned to him, blocking his way up the rest of the stairs, and told him, "I'm gonna level with you, Rogers. This isn't some long-lost POW, this is the Winter Soldier. The files that've been analyzed so far – Hydra hid some of their operations in SHIELD's mainframe and it looks like he carried out some pretty big hits."

"Is there any mention of the Starks?" Her eyes widened and he hastily added, "I don't know if he did it, only that Zola mentioned –"

"Zola? Zola's been dead for –"

"It's complicated, I'll explain in the morning. Point is, Zola implied that Hydra had Howard Stark killed. Romanoff thinks they might've also been involved in Jack Kennedy's death and the attempt on Reagan's life, based on some of the pictures we saw in New Jersey."

"So we're harboring a presidential assassin. Don't say 'maybe', Rogers. I know he was a sniper."

"Still is. He couldn't see Fury – there wasn't a window – so he shot through the wall where he saw I was looking. I've seen him do some really long shots too."

"Oh right. That. So he's killed two of my superiors in SHIELD, one of them _the director_."

"Sitwell was Hydra."

"Uhuh. And how exactly did he kill him? – I still haven't found out. I asked but he said he had no memory of that afternoon, just prepping for it with the Strike team and waking up after. Something about a memory-wiping machine. But you and Romanoff and Wilson all almost died. I have to know."

Steve sighed. "He jumped on the roof of Sam's car, pulled Sitwell out through a window and threw him in front of a truck going the opposite direction."

"And then?"

He glared at her. "You sound like your aunt."

"Good. Then you know you aren't getting up these stairs until you tell me what happened next."

"He pulled the steering wheel out of Sam's hands, shot at us through the window and flipped the car. We barely got out alive. I know he can be dangerous –"

"No, Steve, he _is_ dangerous. The only reason he hasn't hurt anyone yet that I know of is because Ben figured out he could be ordered around, and he seems too confused to remember any protocols Hydra probably tried to drill into his mind. But there could be code words or sleeper orders – anything could set him off.

"Fury gave me an assignment to keep you safe. He's dead now and our agency is gone but as far as I'm concerned the orders still stand. You are Captain America and if you die on my watch –"

" _I get it_ , Sharon. I promise you I will take care of things if he gets violent. Now where the hell is he?"

Sharon looked down at him for a long moment, then turned around and said, "Right this way. He's one of those don't-speak-unless-spoken-too guys but I'm betting he wasn't always like that."

"No, he wasn't."

"All right. Point is, don't expect much talking." She reached a door – the attic ceiling was low, and just by looking at it Steve could tell he'd have to hunch to get through the doorway – and slowly turned the knob. "In here," she whispered. "Don't wake him up."

It was a small room, just enough space for a bed, a table and a chair. Bucky was sleeping on his back, his head turned away from the little window and towards the chair. He looked peaceful; he looked painless.

"Thank you," Steve told Carter, because he couldn't remember whether he had before.

She nodded, and then gestured to the gun at her hip that he'd deliberately not mentioned before. He understood what she meant, what she'd been telling him for minutes now: she considered Bucky a threat, and she wouldn't leave Steve alone with him until she was convinced otherwise.

* * *

There was someone else in the room when he woke up.

It was disorienting, waking up. Sleep felt too nice to be real and when he woke up he felt the pain return. Not that he wasn't used to pain, but after the warmth and calm of unconsciousness it was more obvious than usual.

But back to the other person: he was sitting across from him. It was dark but there was a little bit of moonlight through the window, and some yellow light peeking through the sort-of-opened door.

Blond hair, regular face, that worried frown he always defaulted to when –

Steve.

But he'd _killed_ Steve.

"Uh..." Steve gestured to him and asked, "How's your shoulder?"

 _It feels off. It hurts when I move it or use my arm._

"Ben apparently was a doctor. I can get him to show me how to relocate it. If you're up for that."

 _Okay._

"I'm sorry I did it."

"You had to," he whispered.

"That doesn't mean I don't regret it."

He pulled himself up in the bed, sat up so he could be at Steve's eye-level. Not that he could look him in the eyes.

"You're alive."

"Nine lives, Buck. Just used number five."

"You shouldn't be..."

"Why? Because you were ordered to kill me?"

 _Yes_. "He told me to stop you. And kill you."

Steve looked over at the doorway and Bucky followed his gaze: the woman – Sharon, a Carter – stood outside the door, the gun at her hip obvious.

It was good she was armed. He was a threat. He needed her to be armed.

"And if you died doing it?"

"All the better."

Steve winced. "Those were Pierce's orders."

 _Who?_

"The man who... who told you to kill Sitwell. The bald guy in the car. And Romanoff – the redhead. You might remember her from before, there was a car accident and you shot her to kill the man she was covering."

 _I don't remember any of that. Carter said I did it but I can't remember. But I know the man, and the orders. I remember all the orders._

"You might not remember. That's okay. Do you – d'you remember two nights before that, on the rooftop? You had to shoot someone in my apartment and you used me as a reference. To figure out where he was."

"Yes," he said.

"And after that, I chased you across a roof? I threw my shield at you."

"I caught it. Threw it back." He looked up at Steve, met his eyes. "That was you?"

"Yeah, Buck. That was me."

"Shouldn't've – you should've stayed there. In the... room."

"Well I guess you didn't take all the stupid with you after all."

 _The stupid – the stupid **what**?_

Bucky frowned, and Steve shook his head. "Sorry. Inside joke. Don't worry about it. I'll, uh... I'll let you get some rest." He stood and walked, leaving the room.

"Steve."

 _Why did I say his name?_

Steve turned back to him, his face full of concern and his eyes... sad. And angry.

 _Oh, right._ "It's not your fault." _That I fell, that I killed people_.

He walked back and sat down on the bed, next to Bucky's legs. "Then it's not yours either."

 _You don't know what I did_. "I _killed_ people."

"So have I, Buck."

"Not like this."

"No. Not like this."

He pulled Bucky forward and wrapped his arms around his back. A hug. Bucky knew he should reciprocate but it – it didn't feel right. Not with one of his arms being wrong.

"It's my fault you fell. I didn't keep you from Hydra."

"It's my fault you fell," he muttered in reply. "I shot you."

Steve shook his head. "No, Buck. It's not your fault. It's never been your fault."

He gripped Steve's shirt, though, even when he couldn't feel the cloth in his left hand. He was shaking, he could feel himself shaking. He was cold, he could feel the chill in his bones. He was scared, and his mind wandered, looking for his knives and the guns he'd left downstairs because Ben told him to.

Still Steve kept his arms tight, constricting and strong. "It's not your fault," he repeated, kept saying until the words faded into nothing; until Bucky slipped back into unconsciousness.

* * *

Bucky felt like everything he thought should have a disclaimer attached to it: _I don't know how I know this, but..._

Examples: the milk tastes weird; my brother is old; this Carter has a different accent from the other one; Steve's eyes are angry like they used to be.

 _I don't know how I know this, but this is the most awkward shower I've ever taken._

The one two days ago had been – well, he'd just gotten used to the sensation of water that wasn't painful and freezing when the hot water ran out, and he _may_ have overreacted to that.

Ben turned the water heater up to the maximum two hours before this second shower and had positioned himself next to it, reading the gauge and texting Sharon how much time was left until the water turned cold again.

"Twenty minutes," Sharon reported. "You've got plenty of time. So, you got the shampoo in?"

"Uhuh."

"Okay. Turn the water back on and stand facing away from the shower head. Keep your head tipped back when you wash it out and make sure to get the roots. Keep your mouth closed too. Might be a good idea to rinse out your mouth again with the shower water but only once you've gotten the shampoo out."

"What about soap?" asked Steve.

That was right – Steve was _also_ in the bathroom.

"You use the soap after you put the conditioner in."

"Why – what does conditioner even do?"

"It conditions. I dunno. You need it when your hair's long enough."

"Well if we _cut_ his hair that wouldn't –"

"Oh, you can go ahead. I already tried yesterday, he freaked out when the scissors got near his head."

"But he shaved."

"He only had a couple-days' stubble, he's probably still used to shaving. Or being shaved. Plus, he can handle a razor himself. How's it coming?"

 _I need more information to finish this task_. "What does soap feel like?" he asked, then realized he'd used the wrong word. "Er, shampoo."

"Slippery. Does that help?"

He ran his right hand through his hair and found a slippery patch. "Uhuh."

His shoulder still hurt, but less so now that Steve had relocated it – under Ben's supervision because he used to be a doc in the Corps. That was the first thing they'd done that morning, before food – breakfast – because Sharon had said the pain might make him throw up.

Bucky could've told her that was barely enough pain to make him cry; it took a hell of a lot more hurt to make him throw up. When Steve had dislocated the shoulder, that had gotten close. But he didn't tell her. He wasn't asked to.

He threw up less than an hour later, anyway.

"Great. Steve, go get the conditioner."

Steve returned moments later and said, "I found two."

"They're both mine. Give him the green one."

"What about the red one?"

"Oh, that's old spice. It has a pretty strong smell. I figured he wouldn't want that. Unless either of you have that fragile masculinity thing going on but I don't think you do."

He heard Steve pop the cap and sniff. "Men _put_ _this_ in their hair?"

"Well, yeah. There's deodorant too. It smells manly."

"It smells _awful_."

Sharon started to laugh. "I can see the headlines now: 'Captain America disappoints old spice man'. Maybe they'll make an ad about it – their ads are _so great_."

Steve pushed the shower curtain aside – just a little – and handed the green bottle to Bucky. "Why do you even _have_ it?"

"I told you yesterday, sometimes people crashed at my apartment. I once had a male agent refuse to wash his hair after _crawling through the sewers_ to track down a rogue index lister. 'This shampoo's too girly', well it still gets the muck out of your hair, what's the problem? Okay, Buck, you got all the shampoo out?"

She hadn't called him by any name until this morning. After Steve had showed up.

"Yeah."

"Great. Do the same thing with the conditioner, but don't wash it out. Then take the soap and the poofy thing on the floor and scrub them together. When there's enough suds scrub it over... you. Avoid your left arm. This is where Steve takes over. Tell me when you're done."

The reason Steve was in the bathroom was because Bucky had acknowledged that he didn't remember anything about washing himself, and Sharon didn't want to deal with that. She'd actually said that – "I'm not dealing with this. Rogers, you do it." – and Steve had been designated for that part of the shower.

" 'Kay, Buck, you've got fifteen minutes left on the hot water," Steve told him. "I can walk you through it or give you the general directions – your call."

Choices, another new thing. He could make them just fine on missions – or, he used to be able to, but ever since he woke up on Ben's couch two days previously his brain had felt weird, exhausted – but handlers never gave him choices.

Not handlers – Steve wasn't a handler. Steve was a friend and he was waiting for Bucky to tell him which way he wanted an explanation on how to clean himself.

"Walking through."

"All right. So it's probably a good idea to sit down..."

Steve told him to use the sponge instead of Sharon's poofy thing, and Bucky rubbed himself until all the dirt came off his skin. He started with his feet and legs, got a curt explanation of how to clean the area where his legs met – it had a word but he couldn't remember it – and then proceeded until he got to his shoulder.

"Uh, so, it didn't look like there's anything going wrong with your left arm so it's probably waterproof. We'd be able to tell for sure after that swim in the Potomac."

 _You mean when you almost drowned because of me? That was only five days ago..._

"Anyway, I don't think you'd be able to reach back there – and Ben should definitely take a look. You should probably just leave it be, honestly. Okay, so then there's your neck..."

Sharon returned a minute later and told them, "Five minutes."

"He's washing his hair out now."

"Good timing. Hey, Bucky?"

 _Make a noise._ "Uhuh?"

"Before you get out, check your butt for hairs."

Steve sputtered, at loss for something to say to that. "There's already hair there," he finally said.

"I know, but head hair sometimes gets stuck down there."

"No it doesn't!"

"Short-haired people never notice because it passes right through but _longer hairs_ –"

"You can stop, I got the picture! Ugh, jeez, now I can't un-see –"

"Well, you _asked_."

"What – did you know about this long hair thing, Buck?"

 _Did I?_ "Uh, I think so. Yeah."

Sharon started to laugh and Steve groaned. "Thanks for backing me up, jerk."

"Anytime."

The word slipped out of his mouth before he realized he should even respond – before he realized Steve was being – he didn't know how to describe it but it was this "I actually mean the opposite of what I'm saying" tone of voice he used – and of course the response should go along with that...

A rule of conversation he hadn't realized he'd known.

Remembering things was awful. It made him confused and a little scared, because he'd realize that whatever he had just recalled everyone else already knew – which made him wonder, how many other things had he forgotten?

Maybe it was worth all the misery, just to hear Steve join in with Sharon to laugh on the other side of the shower curtain.

* * *

 _It's not hard to imagine that, between the freezing, torture and missions, Bucky was never allowed/able to sleep. Sleep is incredibly important for long-term memory formation and the serum could probably heal the damage from the memory machine if given the time. Keeping him awake would cut down on that healing._

 _So basically, the guy we see in Cap 2 is suffering from the worst case of sleep deprivation on the planet, only alive because A- he got physical "rest" while frozen, and B- he has the serum._

 _Hence why I let him sleep for almost a full day._


	4. April 9–13, 2014

_The second deviation from canon is in the first scene, fyi._

 _Russian courtesy of a neat function that Google Translate has that I have yet to see many other writers take advantage of. Seriously, the phonetic spelling option is the best._

* * *

"We need a plan," said Carter.

They'd moved downstairs to the dining room. Ben made lunch with the extra food Steve had bought and Bucky ate everything his brother put in front of him – which made Steve crack a smile but also made him think of the shit Hydra must've forced down his throat.

Steve set his fork down and leaned back in his chair. "If you're like your aunt you'll just overrule any plans I make."

She crossed her arms and glared at him. "According to my family I _am_ like Peggy, A, and B, as you pointed out so directly three nights ago, I _do_ owe you for keeping an eye on you for two years without telling you. But this is way more than what you're due."

"Then _I'll_ owe _you_ instead. Happy?"

"No. You destroyed my agency."

"Hydra destroyed your agency. I just gave it a push."

Carter rolled her eyes. "Of course you'd say that."

"Besides, you said not to worry about it."

"About ruining my career. My aunt's legacy is different."

"Tell you what, when we have this taken care of I'll go apologize to her. Happy?"

She sighed. "Fine. Okay, so the first thing we need to do is find out what you've" – she nodded to Bucky – "done. Obviously that's gonna take some time, and I don't know how well you'll –"

"No it won't," Steve told her. "There's a... record." Bucky lifted his head, recognition in his eyes. "You know about it?"

"The NKVD file," his best friend whispered.

"Well, now they're the KGB."

"They aren't anything anymore," cut in Ben. "They folded when the Iron Curtain fell. With the rest of the USSR. Right?"

Back to Carter: "Wrong. They and Hydra were in bed together?"

"Yes," Steve answered. He got up, found his duffel bag in the living room and handed the file to Carter. She untied the string, opened it and said,

" _O bózhe moy_."

"You speak Russian?"

" _Da, i ya prochital yego slishkom_."

"She says she can read Russian too," mumbled Bucky.

"I'm assuming Romanoff got this for you?"

"She had a contact over there get it," Steve replied. "I was going to learn Russian myself but it'll be faster if you translate it."

"And I 'spose it's too late to tell you not to pull on that string."

It seemed Peggy wasn't the only one who'd rubbed off on this Carter. "Nat said something along those lines too."

"Mhmm. Remind me when this is all over to yell at her for telling you to ask me out."

"I'll yell at her for not telling me you're a Carter."

"We can double-time her. I've always wanted to see her flustered."

"It's a plan."

Ben: "Okay, both of you, the flirting is fun to watch but we should get back to the file." He leaned over from where he sat next to Bucky – across from Steve, with Sharon at the close end – to look at the file and gasped. "Sweet Mary."

"Mother of Jesus," Bucky finished.

Steve grinned and asked, "I don't suppose you remember any of the prayers? Hail Mary, Our Father – no? Okay. Yeah," he told Ben, "it looks pretty bad."

"It reads even worse," Sharon added, flipping through the pages. "It'll take me a few days to translate all of it."

"Okay."

"In the meantime... I had a couple cousins who were also in SHIELD, and they're freaking out 'cuz I haven't contacted them in a couple days. I think my parents might call the cops."

He sighed; of course he should've thought of that. "Call your cousins – at least a half-mile away from here."

She rolled her eyes. "I wasn't asking you what to do, or for permission. I was giving you a heads up that I'm doing it. I also need a timeframe. I have an interview next week –"

"Just a few days, okay? Until you translate that file."

"And then what, Steve? He needs physical exams, he needs brain scans and doctors to figure out how to fix what Hydra's done... and all of that means he needs a legal status. The FBI's gonna give up trying to find his body soon and that means they'll want to question you about the helicarriers. They're already dragging Romanoff in front of that committee that I keep forgetting the acronym of. If they ask you directly..."

"It won't be a problem."

"You can't lie under oath, Steve."

"Watch me."

She stared at him with an open mouth.

"What?"

"Y'know, I never really believed Aunt Peg when she said you went AWOL. I thought it was a secret mission, a wink-wink-nudge-nudge arrangement with Phillips and they were covering it up because they didn't want to admit that the army would risk you like that. Every time she and Uncle Gabe told that story, I'd say _there's no way Captain America would've done that_. Not for _anybody_."

"Well now you know better," he replied simply.

Her eyes – and Ben's – went to Bucky. Steve ignored them and continued, "It shouldn't have to come to that, though."

"So what I'm thinking, then, is we need someone in Hydra to tell the government themselves about this... secret Pierce had. Not you, you're biased. Not Ben, that's a dead giveaway where he is. I don't have any real connection... unless Wilson could –"

Steve shook his head. "I'm not going to ask that of him."

"But you trust him not to go to the feds with this."

"Yes."

"Program," said Bucky suddenly. "Not secret."

They all looked over at him. "What d'you mean, 'program'?" asked his brother.

Steve: "It wasn't just you. There were more people."

A nod and a hoarse, "Yeah."

"You remember any of them?"

He looked up. "A little. Faces. Not names."

Bucky didn't know any names, not even Pierce's until Steve had told him. He'd been kept away from that, probably on the slim chance that Hydra was found out and couldn't keep him theirs. Or, to keep the KGB from getting any information out of him about Hydra; Steve still wasn't sure about the relationship the two groups had with each other.

"Then it's a good thing Steve knows how to draw," Ben said.

"I haven't drawn anything in months."

"I've heard it's like riding a bike."

"Who told you _that_?"

"You. Er – wait, that couldn't've been you, I don't think you know how to ride a bike..."

Steve shrugged; Ben was right. "Yeah, well, guess it's too late for that. In any case, I know who we're going to use," he told Sharon.

"Who?"

"Pierce."

In his periphery, Bucky winced.

"What about him?" asked Ben. "He's dead, he went down with the helicarriers."

"No, he didn't. Romanoff and" – they didn't know about Fury, he couldn't tell them about him – "Wilson took him with 'em when they got out of the Triskelion. He's banged up but alive. The FBI has him."

Carter, unsurprisingly unsurprised: "Has he talked?"

"Not that I know of. Stark would tell me if he had."

Bucky frowned slightly at the last name but otherwise had no reaction. He barely reacted unless prompted – by someone addressing him, or by one of the many small actions that set him off spontaneously. Most of the time he just froze, but the times he didn't someone had to be near enough to grab his flesh-and-blood arm and calm him down before he pulled a knife out of his metal arm.

They'd found three trigger phrases so far – two Russian expressions and the Marxist line "nothing can have value without being an object of utility". Steve was seriously considering finding copies of the Communist Manifesto and a "Russian for dummies" book and reading them out loud.

"That's good, actually. If he told everyone about" – she gestured to Bucky – "you, then they'd be hunting _you_ " – to Steve – "down like it was nobody's business. I know suicide's a sin to you Catholics but I wouldn't trust anyone who'd killed their best friend to be anywhere near a good place."

Now Bucky stiffened, and Steve glared at Sharon and motioned to him.

"I didn't mean – okay, look. That wouldn't've been voluntary," she told Bucky. "I was talking about – about someone who knew what he was doing. What was going on. That doesn't include you. 'Sides, you didn't actually kill him so it's all good. _Right_?"

She'd addressed Steve, and he replied, "You have to ask that?"

"Yes I do."

"Okay. There's no problem," he told Bucky. "You understand that?"

A small nod, which he considered good enough for the moment. Apparently Carter did too, because she returned to the file and said, "There are appendices on the back, should I do those too?"

Bucky was eyeing Steve's food – Chinese food, lots of chicken and brown rice soaked in sauce and too much salt in all of it – so he pushed it across the table to him without a word. It took Bucky a few seconds to figure out that meant he could eat it. "Skim through them to see if there's anything I should know when I talk to Pierce."

"I can help you if there's medical jargon," Ben told Sharon, "though..."

"It might be too much to stomach? I get it. Thanks for the offer. I might also contact Romanoff with translation questions – I haven't read Russian in a while. That okay, Steve?"

"Yeah."

"We have a cover story?"

"She won't tell anybody."

"I know that. I just didn't know if you trusted her or not."

"I do."

"Okay."

"But don't tell her if you don't have to. I don't want her to have to lie when she goes in front of Congress next week."

"Oh, so the atheist Russian spy shouldn't have to lie under oath but Catholic boy-scout Captain America can?"

"I was never in the boy scouts. I don't know why everyone keeps saying I was."

She waved his words away with her hand. "It's an expression. That's not relevant. If we stick to my plan neither of you will have to do any perjury. The government'll already know about all this by the time she takes the stand. You should get some sleep, I'll take the afternoon shift and start on the file."

"Shift?" asked Ben.

"Yeah. One person who knows what they're doing should be awake at all times. No offense to your brother."

" 'S a good idea," Bucky mumbled.

"See? At least _someone_ appreciates my security expertise. I'm gonna call Sam, ask him to have lunch with anyone he knows in the Pentagon or the FBI. He mentions that he thinks Captain Rogers would be up for interrogating Pierce –"

"– and his friend might take it to the top," finished Ben. "Put the idea in the brass's head so they reach out to _him_ , not the other way around. Looks less suspicious than Steve asking himself. But tell Wilson that the contact has to be in the relevant department – someone from CID or the anti-Hydra taskforce would be best. Try the army, they have the biggest intelligence branch."

"Got it." Sharon stood up, pulled out her phone and dialed. "Meeting over."

* * *

Steve took the night shift around 9PM and spent three hours sketching out faces as Bucky recounted his memories surrounding them. He turned the drawing pad sideways, the wide way, and each page contained the profile or front view of a person along with anything Bucky could remember to describe them. Sometimes that was as much as, "he was the next cell down from me – he had three kids and was from Kursk" to, "I saw her once walk by the room I was in".

Three times he forgot a face completely in the middle of describing it; twice he pulled knives, too caught up in a memory to realize that it was only that. While he was shaking Bucky out of that first memory Steve got bruised on his shoulder and cut –shallow, not serious – on his left forearm, and his best friend spent the next few minutes curled up in a ball and saying the words "I'm sorry" over and over again.

Ben offered to ask his brother for his remaining knives – they had no idea how he had so many – but Steve turned him down. "The last thing I want him to feel right now is defenseless," he told him.

Unsurprisingly, Carter insisted it all be recorded on their prepaid phones, which apparently could hold "thirty hours of audio". When they were done for the night Steve was supposed to transfer the track to the lap Sharon had bought the day before – one that had never been connected to the internet.

One of the only names Bucky remembered was Zola's, but from the countless years of hearing "Herr Zola" said by his assistants instead of from the army days. Steve drew four different versions of the Hydra scientist, marking his aging and decline of health till his death in the mid-seventies.

Not soon after he finished the last sketch of Zola he noticed that his best friend was leaning into a pillow, his eyes drooping. "Hey," he said, "we can finish for the night if you want."

Bucky sat back up. "I'm – I'm fine, I can go on –"

"You can't keep your eyes open. You spent seventy years getting no sleep – you're exhausted. It's okay if you need to go to bed."

He thought for a long moment, and then nodded his head. "Yeah. I need to sleep."

"Okay. I'll be down here when you wake up tomorrow. Unless you take another twenty-four-hour nap."

That was teasing but his friend didn't catch it. He stood up and walked to the stairs.

"Bucky?"

He paused on the first step.

"I'm sorry about what happened this morning. I shouldn't've pushed you like that."

Silence.

"Anyway. G'night."

Steve didn't expect a response and he didn't get one, just Bucky's quiet footsteps as he walked up the staircase.

He scanned the drawings with a special mouse and saved them on the laptop in a file «04_09». He shut down the computer and left it, the sketchpad and Ben's pencils on the coffee table before getting up and wandering around the house.

The sooner the morning came, the better.

* * *

Ben's water heater was truly a piece of shit; it ran out on Sharon only ten minutes after she got in. Well, it was a good thing she had retained the memory of her trainee days. Lukewarm water was nothing compared to the freezing cold baths she'd taken in the winters then.

She dried off her hair as she went downstairs and found Bucky sitting on a couch, focused on something on her laptop.

"Steve on a food run?"

He nodded, not taking his eyes off the computer. His right hand rested below the keys and he tapped every second or so – mostly on the up arrow, a few times on the down arrow.

"Whatcha doing there?"

She sat down on the couch next to him and found he was playing a game. "Oh, that. I forgot that Chrome came pre-installed." She checked the score – upwards of seven thousand – and said, "No way. I've never gotten above a thousand."

"He's been playing for half an hour," supplied Ben from the kitchen, dishing oatmeal into bowls. "I think this round's been going on for ten minutes. I showed him it."

"Still... _ten minutes_?"

"Reaction time," Bucky muttered. "Serum makes it faster."

"Okay. Good to know you'd be disqualified from the cannot-connect-to-internet-dinosaur-obstacle-course-game tournament." Bucky glanced over at her – his dinosaur died on-screen, making that little game-over sound – and she added, "That was a joke."

He nodded and replied, "I know. I got that."

Sharon's disposable phone rang and she answered. "Hello?"

"I'm having lunch with an old Air Force quote-on-quote _buddy_ of mine," Wilson told her on the other end of the line. "He works in the Pentagon now, pretty high up in counter-terrorism."

"That was fast."

"Guy actually called me. I'm thinking his superiors want to find out what Steve's gonna do next. Harry Gryffindor probably thinks Captain America's new wingman would be more chatty than the man himself."

" 'Harry Gryffindor' is really his name? That sounds fake. There's no way his parents named him that."

"His name's actually James Potter Metzger. A few of the guys in our program – me included – read Harry Potter, and y'know the character's middle name is James, and they were in Gryffindor house. We gave each other codenames for fun, that was his."

"Oh, that's just cruel."

"Well, we thought it was funny at the time."

"Mean boys. So what're you gonna tell him?"

"Steve and I made some planning before... you called. I don't know what the new plan is so I figure I'll just tell him some of that. Mention how I've heard Pierce hasn't talked yet, and Steve thinks there's a lot he knows that'd help when we're off fighting Hydra. We're not leaving town for a while, have a lot of free time while we finalize arrangements with Stark."

Sharon grinned. "I like the plan. Remind me why we've never met?"

" 'Cuz no one likes SHIELD. _Liked_. Fury cut a pretty wide path, played hardball a lot from what I remember reading the news. I bet your aunt was the same way."

"She was, I heard about it firsthand. And now, 'course, everyone's jumping at the chance to tear whatever's left down."

"I'm with the folks who say SHIELD deserves it. What with hiding Hydra for all these years. And Steve's one of 'em too – you should know that."

"I figured that out when I saw who was sleeping on our friend's couch." Bucky looked over at her again – his dinosaur died again – and she said, "All right. I was just checking in –

"How is he? Steve didn't know the last time we talked."

"He's... physically healthy, as far as we can tell. But it's gonna be a long road. Anyway, I have to get back to translating this file."

"You know Russian?"

" _Da_. We'll talk later."

"Yup."

She caught sight of the sketchpad on the table and picked it up. "Wow, you guys got through a lot of people. Did Steve scans these?"

"I dunno."

He started to hand over the laptop but she held her hand up. "If you're not done with it you don't have to give it to me. I can look at the files later."

Sharon had decided the day before that whoever this person sitting next to her was, he wasn't the Winter Soldier anymore; too much exposure to Steve, probably. That meant that he was a controllable danger, and a person who needed all the help he could get – and reestablishing boundaries and self-worth was part of that.

Bucky thought for a while, and then finished turning over the laptop. "Gonna go eat breakfast."

"Whatever you say, Buck."

* * *

The cellphone Stark had provided rang, finally, on Saturday afternoon.

"Area code's 202," Steve told Sharon.

"Wait a couple rings, then pick up."

He nodded, let it go on for a few seconds and then answered: "This is Rogers." He nodded at the reply and asked, "What can I do for you, Director?"

Steve stood up. "Thank you, sir, but I was just doing my job."

Another long pause, and then, "Oh, I'm sure he does. But I heard he hasn't talked – How so? – Sir, Alexander Pierce is a murderer –"

He rolled his eyes at whatever the director said in reply. "I understand. When do you want me to interrogate him?"

Steve looked over at Sharon and asked, "Tomorrow?"

She wouldn't have the file ready in time for tomorrow. She mouthed "no" and held up a finger – _one more day_.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'm busy tomorrow – Church in the morning, meeting with a contact in the afternoon. But Monday morning will work."

He nodded again. "Anything I can do to help, sir."

Steve hung up the phone and sat back down. "Monday morning."

"Make sure you don't taunt Pierce," Sharon told him. "Gloating isn't really a good idea. And now you have to go to church."

"I know. I was planning on going anyway."

"Please tell me," said Ben, "you aren't planning on telling everything to a priest."

Steve blinked. "No. That'd be reckless."

"So, completely in-character." Bucky looked up at his brother and Ben told him, "Well, if you can't tell him how impulsive he can be sometimes then I will. And he never thinks things through. I remember you used to complain about it all the time."

Sharon: "Back to the _topic_ –"

"No." He squared his jaw and said, "None of you can stay here. Not after Monday." Steve sighed but Ben told him, forcefully, "The _second_ you tell them that my brother's alive they're gonna start looking at family and that means me. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If they get Bucky –"

"They won't, Ben. I promise you –"

"No, he's right," said Sharon. This was one of those concerns that she'd had in the back of her mind for the past few days, though she kept shunting it to the side because everything else seemed more important or immediate. "You're right. Do you have any suggestions of where to go, then? 'Cuz I don't."

Ben opened and shut his mouth. "You're SHIELD, you have to have _something_."

"Believe it or not I really don't. My landlord never wants to see my face again. Steve's apartment is compromised. Wilson's house in under his sister's name – something about taxes, I dunno – but if they haven't figured out he lives there yet then they will soon. So I'm open to ideas."

"I know a place," said Steve. "It's where we went with Hill after the causeway."

"Local?"

"Yep."

"Gimme the address, I can check –"

"There's no address. It's an abandoned structure in the middle of Rock Creek Park. Hill said they'd built it as a fallout shelter in the late sixties."

"Makes sense. Would Hill tell Stark about it now that she works for him?"

"I don't see why she would."

"All right. Give me directions and I'll check it out tomorrow when you get back from church." She looked over at Ben, who didn't seem any less relaxed. "Okay, Barnes?"

He replied, "All right," after staring at the star on his brother's metal arm for a long moment. "All right."

* * *

On Sunday afternoon Steve watched Sharon leave to prep the safehouse, and when she'd been gone long enough he joined Bucky in the living room – Ben had gone to bed early – and dialed Stark's number.

"So the Capsicle's still alive," the other man said by way of greeting.

"Hi, Stark. Yeah, I needed... a few days to get some things figured out."

"Thought you already had. You're gonna go hunt down Hydra. We're getting the old group –"

"Maybe not. Listen, I need a favor and you'll probably hate me when it's done."

"You know I love to hate on you, Rogers, but _hating you_ would take a lot."

"Believe me, this is enough to do that. If I could ask anyone else I would."

"All right, lay it on me. What's gonna be so hard that I'll hate you for it?"

"It shouldn't be so hard."

"Spit it out, Cap."

"The director of the FBI thinks I can get more out of Pierce than they have. I'm questioning him tomorrow. I need you to record it."

"FBI already does that."

"I know. But I need my own copy."

"You think the feds'll shut you out, not let you use the info to take Hydra down?"

"No. Pierce isn't going to say anything about current members or bases. He isn't stupid."

"You're losing me here, Rogers."

Steve sighed. "The FBI thinks he might tell but I know he won't. But he _will_ talk about the man who killed your parents."

He looked over at Bucky, sitting on the couch, and tried to meet his eyes but his friend kept his focus on a loose thread in his sleeve.

"The Winter Soldier," said Stark grimly. "They guy who almost killed you, too. They haven't found his body yet, not even that metal arm."

"I know."

"I'm still fuzzy on the 'hating you' part. And why you need a copy of the video."

"You'll know tomorrow. Just make sure you record the whole thing."

"If they catch on that I'm watching they can just cut the loop, make it closed-circuit. You have a plan if that happens?"

"I'll deal with that."

"Well it's your party. You'll owe me. Not much, though, but if I do end up hating you for whatever you think I'll hate you for then it might be a bigger favor. But right now I'm thinking you can pay me back by telling me how you killed the guy."

"You might not want to hear that story."

"He killed my parents, 'course I want –"

"The KGB kept a file on him. Romanoff got if for me a few days ago. He wasn't a volunteer, he was a POW –"

"Okay, then it's good you put him out of his misery." Steve winced but let Stark continue: "Get over it, Cap. The guy's dead, he doesn't care anymore."

 _Oh, Tony_ , Steve thought, _you have no idea how wrong you are_.

"I'm going in by nine AM," he chose to say instead. "I don't know what interrogation room."

"Leave that to me. Happy interrogating."

Stark hung up and Steve sat down across from Bucky. "Did you get all that?"

His best friend nodded.

"You know what I'm going to do?"

"You're gonna have Stark – watch you talk to him."

"To Pierce."

Another nod.

"He might think that I killed you. I'm counting on that."

"You should've," he said softly.

Steve leaned forward. "Buck."

"They think you did."

"That doesn't mean I _would_."

Bucky finally met his eyes. "Stark."

"Anthony Stark. Howard's son."

"You said I killed him."

"Someone in Hydra said you did."

His best friend searched his face for a long moment before saying – asking – "He saved my life?"

"Howard, yeah. He helped me get you out of Hydra in forty-three."

"The camp."

"Yeah. You remember it?"

"Barely."

"Do you actually mean barely, or are you just trying to get around saying the word 'no'?"

Bucky thought for a long moment, while the smell of the vomit Steve had cleaned up on Wednesday morning rose in his mind – and the sound of rushed breathing, silent sobs, and then Ben yelling at him for pushing his brother into a panic attack.

"The second. I think."

"Okay. Well, the recap of that is that I got stuck in the USO for a while, but when I found out Hydra had captured your regiment I... went AWOL with Peggy and Howard and stormed the camp. I didn't know if you were still alive."

"Common theme."

"Which part, Hydra putting you through shit or me doing stupid things to get you out?"

"Both."

"Yeah. Listen, um..."

Bucky nodded, as if he knew Steve needed to know he was listening.

"Sharon's gonna help you move to the safehouse tomorrow. Sam's gonna be there. You might remember him."

"Sam... Wilson."

"Yeah."

"I threw him off a carrier."

"Yeah. You did. You know he's been helping me and Sharon with this. He's, um... he's not thrilled about watching you but he understands the situation. He was a medic and pararescue in the last couple wars – well, one of 'em's still going on but it's... not like ours was, it's not that big... anyway, this safehouse has medical equipment and he's gonna do a physical assessment. If you're up for that."

Bucky gave him a sideways look. "I _threw him_ off a _carrier_."

"And he kicked you in the head on the causeway. He said he'd be fine as long as you didn't pull a knife on him." His best friend didn't look convinced so he added, "Sharon was the first responder when you shot Fury. She lived next door to me. They get it, it's not your fault. But you did destroy Sam's suit so... be nice."

He simply nodded again in reply, and Steve sighed. "All right. Get some sleep, I'm taking the night watch again."

Bucky walked up the stairs and Steve heard him run the water in the bathroom. Brushing his teeth was another one of those habits that he'd lost to Hydra, although neither of them had started doing it till the Army required them to so it wasn't surprising he couldn't remember ever doing it.

Steve sighed, picked up the translated file and started to review it for the next morning.


	5. April 14, 2014

Steve brought a copy of the KGB file with him when he walked into the FBI building in downtown DC. It was in a clasp envelope with the top fastened, and the security guard who took it asked him if he could open it; Rogers said no so the guard shrugged and put it through the scanner.

An agent named Zhivago – "Yes, like the doctor" – escorted Steve through the main floor.

"We need to know what Hydra's done – who they've killed, where their sleepers are," the agent told him. "And their bases, and whatever communication systems they use. Here's the elevator."

Steve's phone buzzed in the car: «Recording going. 2 cameras, 1 on you & 1 on Pierce». He typed out and sent his reply – «Thanks. Going silent» and returned his focus to Zhivago.

"I don't know how much he'll talk about their current activities," he told him, "but I can get him to talk about what Hydra's done."

"Is that what the folder's for?"

"Yeah. I'll use it when I talk to him but you can keep it after. It's in Russian."

"You know Russian?"

"For the last five days, yeah."

He was lying – he just had a good memory and an even better translator.

"Well, all right. Here's the room."

"Thanks. Agents," he said to the cluster of people in the anteroom. One man stood up and extended his hand.

"I'm not an agent."

Rogers recognized the voice: "Director."

They shook and the director nodded his head at the door to their right. "He's waiting in there. He doesn't know it's you who'll be questioning him, though. You want to show us what's in the folder?"

Steve withdrew the file and displayed its cover. "It's a copy. I have the original somewhere else."

"We'll take that off –"

"When I'm done." The man scowled but quickly shrugged it off, and before he could reply Rogers added, "And whatever Pierce says in there, I don't want you to pull me out."

* * *

Pierce, apparently, found Captain Rogers' appearance laughable.

Literally. He was laughing.

Steve had made sure to set his expression before the guard opened the door; he was aiming for stern and controlled – a look he used often when staring down people though nobody knew he was trying to emulate old photographs of his father, dead longer than Steve had been alive – but he had to admit he was very, very angry.

As he entered the room he pushed his relief – Bucky was alive, safe, relatively unharmed and hadn't hurt anyone since the helicarriers – away and focused on his fury – what Hydra had done to his best friend, how much worse the file said it got for him when Pierce took over.

Pierce, who was still laughing like he didn't have a care in the world.

The former Secretary of Defense caught his breath and said, "I wondered which one of you survived. I would've preferred you both dead, but one is fine. Two supersoldiers fighting to the death – must've been incredible to watch. I'm sorry I couldn't see it." He leaned forward. "So what was it like, killing your best friend?"

Steve dropped the file down onto the table between them and continued to glare at Pierce.

"You found it. I'm not surprised that you did – faster than I thought you would, though. Have you translated it yet?"

" _Ya govoryu po-russki_ ," Steve replied.

"Do you, now. I wasn't aware. Have fun reading it?"

No reply. He wouldn't say a word more than he had to.

"I have to admit, the first time I read it I was impressed. Horrified but impressed. Then again, I'd been in Vietnam for three years – enlisted, not drafted like your buddy was – and I saw some pretty awful things there. But hey, we're the US Army. We had a good reason for being here." He smirked. "I didn't find out that reason was Hydra till a while after that. Seventy-nine, that's when I was recruited.

"But enough about me. Let's talk about your old pal _Bucky_. That's why you're here, isn't it? Well, part of the reason. Those Hoover boys must be pretty desperate to order you to be in the same room as me, if they think I'll talk to you. They're right, though – I'll tell you every single thing Hydra did to your poor dead friend, and you'll sit there and listen because you are, after all, Captain America. The guy who makes the sacrifice play. The guy who _kills_ _his best friend_ to save millions of people he's never met.

 _Says the man who would kill millions for his own benefit._

"I have to say, Cap, I thought you were better than that. But of course you killed him, otherwise he would've killed you. And then you wouldn't've overridden Zola's algorithm and we would have taken out everyone who could have _possibly_ been a threat to us.

"And now you're here. Good soldier boy, following every order they tell you to follow even though it _kills you_ inside to do it. Now your friend, he wasn't like that – not till Zola got his hands on him, and then I did, and even then he was erratic."

Steve sat down.

This was going to be very, very hard.

* * *

Steve felt like someone stuck a hand blender into his mind and spun it around till there was nothing left but mush.

The file had been clinical, objective and unemotional in its descriptions of the torture Bucky had been put through, but he suspected that Carter had censored some of the worst parts because what Pierce told him sounded much, much worse.

Zola had started the Winter Soldier program after he was released from prison and kept it in East Germany until the sixties, when his health declined and he focused his energy on preserving his mind in computers. He handed the program over to a subordinate, and it was passed around until Pierce took over in 1985 after quickly rising up the ranks of Hydra.

The first thing Pierce did to "the asset" was hook him up to an IV with an experimental drug that induced the feeling of trust and openness and could be used as a temporary memory booster, and had Bucky tell him everything he could recall of his life before Hydra. The truth was that he'd remembered a lot, talked easily about his family, his friends, his schooling and the jobs held before being drafted. The holes in his memory hadn't seemed to bother him much at all, even though there'd been many – too many, in Steve's opinion; too few, in Pierce's.

The only time Bucky had gotten anxious was when he told Pierce about Steve – specifically, that Steve "played for both sides", as the former secretary said. He also said that he'd tried to have Bucky say that they'd "done the dirty" –

Steve's mouth filled with bile at that moment, if it hadn't tasted bad enough already.

– but he'd insisted they never did, which was the truth. The names of everyone – all girls – Bucky had had sex with, sure, but his best friend wasn't on that list. He had never even been close, and it had been a long time since Steve had even wanted it; fortunately Pierce didn't know anything about _that_.

Well, as far as being outed went, this was not the worst scenario Steve could have pictured in his head.

After Pierce had gotten – and recorded – everything that he could out of Bucky, he put him through Zola's memory machine five times in a row and then had him kill prisoners to test his endurance and obedience. They were in the middle of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and this base was on the border with Pakistan, so apparently kidnapped civilians went unnoticed.

Bucky had drawn the line, though, at killing a ten-year-old girl – the first child Pierce had put in front of him. He'd turned on the guards and killed seven before they subdued him, and put him through almost a whole day's worth of electroshock to purge the word "no" and similar refusals from his vocabulary.

Former Secretary Pierce didn't even mention what happened to the little girl after that. Steve put her high on his list of people to find after he got his best friend safe, though truth be told she was probably dead. Hydra didn't leave witnesses.

Pierce collaborated with the Russian branch for a few years until the Soviet army pulled out of Afghanistan, sparking the beginning of the collapse of the USSR. At that point he took over the Eastern European branch and moved Hydra's main operations to the US.

He threw the assassination of the Starks in Steve's face, told him that it was a good thing he had killed Bucky rather than let him live with the guilt of murdering someone who'd saved his life.

Steve hadn't thought of that. Maybe that was what Bucky had been trying to tell him the night before.

Pierce didn't mention anything about the Red Room – the file did, and if that program was ongoing like Natasha had claimed it was then it made sense he wouldn't want to spill its secrets – but he did recount the mission in Iran in 2009, which had been the second-to-last before Fury's assassination.

And Fury...

But it wasn't hearing about that night that broke Steve's calm, because he'd already heard all about it from his best friend; it two days later, after the fight on the causeway – after Steve had unmasked the Winter Soldier and discovered who he was – when Bucky had acted out and confessed to Pierce that he remembered the man on the bridge.

"But I knew him" – those were the words he'd used.

Steve winced when the secretary told him that, and the latter laughed again. "I wonder if he remembered you again, before you put him out of his misery."

He leaned forward and leered. He let the silence settle for a minute and then said, "I told you what I did to him, Captain. It's your turn."

Okay, then.

"I didn't kill him," Steve told him. "And you just gave me everything I need to get him a pardon."

To his credit, Pierce managed to keep his smile on his face, though it wavered somewhat. "You'd like to believe that. I bet they haven't found the body yet, maybe you're hoping the serum would somehow save him like it did in forty-five. But we both know you're bluffing. You couldn't've stopped him without killing him."

"Fine. You want to know what really happened?"

Pierce waved his manacled hand – he was chained at the wrists and ankles and the links were fastened to the table – in a gesture to go ahead.

"I dislocated his shoulder and put him in a chokehold till he lost consciousness. I replaced the chip in the command center after he shot me three times. _He_ says it was four but the doctors only found three bullets" – what was left of Pierce's smile faded but Steve kept his focus on maintaining eye contact – "and besides, I only felt being hit three times.

"I'd tell him he missed the first one but you know what snipers are like – they don't like to admit they can't hit a bullseye every time. Or maybe you're to blame, for that fear of what you'd do to him if he missed. But that wasn't enough to stop him from saving me from drowning after he started to remember again. Or from finding me after I was discharged."

He refused to mention Ben; that knowledge might give Pierce something to grasp at, and the FBI a faster path to the old man's door. Sharon would also disapprove – something about tracking cell signals, connecting the phone numbers and triangulating Sam's phone in Rock Creek Park.

Steve leaned forward, mirroring the former secretary, and continued: "I caught on pretty quickly that he couldn't deliberately say the word 'no', and when I tried to get him to say it he threw up. And then had a panic attack. But at least you told me everything that you and your Hydra buddies did to him, so that he wouldn't have to. Thank you for that.

"And you're right, he doesn't remember that much. Memories are stronger the farther back he goes – and, 'course, there's that note in this file that says that anything in the thirty minutes before you put him through Zola's machine is gone forever. But I'm not gonna test that."

He wanted to make sure Pierce knew his former asset was still alive – he might still be unconvinced – so Steve switched topics:

"He _did_ remember, though, some things he overheard about that safe in your study when you put it in. Mid-nineties, I think. You needed somewhere to put all those contracts and reports – and the videos you made to show other of Hydra's leaders to keep the program under your control. That's right, everyone thinks you were the only man in charge – you like to act like you were – but we both know that's not true. Hydra's heads have been cut off enough times and you know the rest of that motto."

 _There goes trying not to throw this is his face. Didn't Sharon tell you not to do that?_

"You also made the mistake of describing the safe, which is how the FBI knows not to take it out of the wall when they open it – which won't be hard at all because you said the code in his earshot. He's always been good with numbers. And I wonder just how much the Hoover boys will find in there."

Steve reached under the table and pulled the chain down, yanking Pierce back towards him. He leaned in close and said, still loud enough for the microphones,

"You overestimated the effectiveness of your own sadism."

It was something that Bucky would have said, he who graduated near the top of his class in grade school and nearly went to college – who read every book he got his hands on not because he was bored and sick but because he genuinely wanted to. Not that anyone living knew that – even Ben or Reba, who'd both been too young to remember those details about their older brother.

Captain Rogers held former Secretary Pierce there for a long moment, and then let go.

"He'll never be the man you knew," the other man sneered. "I _broke_ him."

"I know you broke him. I figured that out on the causeway." He paused, collected his words. "You're still thinking about this all wrong, Secretary. All _you_ should care about is that you'll be rotting in jail for the rest of your life. But I don't care what you think. I'll be helping my best friend put himself back together instead of burying him like you wanted."

He picked up the file, looked down briefly at the man glaring back up, and walked out of the room.

The anteroom contained four guards: one at his door, two to the outside hallway and one at the other door that Steve hadn't been into. "Director Foreman wants you to join him in the observation room," said the latter, and opened her door.

"Thanks."

* * *

"You son of a bitch," Foreman said as Rogers entered the room.

 _Well, I've been called worse_. He held up the file and said, "All yours."

"That safe in the secretary's house, were you bullshitting that or is it real?"

"Give me a piece of paper, I'll write down everything I know about it."

"Be easier just to have Barnes come in and tell us himself."

"It might be. But that's not going to happen."

"You can't always get what you want, Rogers."

"If I got everything I wanted my best friend wouldn't've fallen off a train in Germany."

"I did you a favor, letting you stay in –"

If this had been about anyone else, Steve would have laughed. "I exposed the largest conspiracy in history, stopped Hydra from killing millions of people, including the president and _you_ , and neutralized the most dangerous assassin they had. Who also knows a hell of a lot about their organization. _And_ I just got you all the evidence you need to avoid a public trial for Pierce. _I_ did _you_ a favor, sir."

The director scowled and Rogers continued: "And you can pay me back by going to President Ellis and getting a pardon."

"You're asking too much."

"Rewatch the interview and try to tell me that again. Now, pencil and paper – unless you don't want to see what's in that safe."

Steve wrote down the information – memorized word-for-word from Bucky's account on Saturday night, after describing the faces of two of the workmen who installed the safe – and left the room.

It was all he could do to keep himself walking steadily through the halls, back towards the elevator. He'd known other people would be observing the interview – interrogation, whatever they wanted to call it – but he hadn't realized that _every damn person in the J. Edgar Hoover Building of the FBI_ would end up hearing about it; the number of faces he caught looking at him as he left – a mixture of horrified, stunned and angry – told him that.

When he was clear of the building he turned his two phones off silent: on the first, fifteen missed calls from Stark, six from Banner, one from Natasha – maybe Stark had filled her in – and two from Sam; on the second, a text from Carter that simply said, «Tony's pissed. Also he streamed it to us too tho Ben couldn't watch most of it. Bravo»

He opened the text conversation to reply and found more messages:

«That's bravo for that amazing interrogation and also for pissing Tony off so much»  
«Srsly I've known him since I was a kid and he is using words I've never heard before»  
«Oh good he finally hung up»  
«I have never seen someone on that side of the table go so long in an interrogation w/o talking btw, it was amazing to watch...also really sucky because of the topic but objectively amazing»

Another message up: «Are you going to the safehouse or back here?»

«I'm being followed» he replied.

«No surprise there. Drop the tail & meet me at Wilson's place»

The other phone buzzed in his hand pocket and he checked the caller ID before answering.

Well, Steve would have to talk to him sooner than later

He answered the call: "Stark."

"You're right, I _do_ hate you."

"If you want me to apologize I'll tell you right now don't bother."

" 'Cuz that's gonna make me hate you less."

"I don't have the time to argue with you. Sorry to disappoint."

"Who said I wanted to argue?"

"You opened with 'I hate you'."

"Believe it or not, Cap, there's a difference between hating someone and wanting to fight them. And if I'm gonna take it out on someone it's gonna be with one of my suits." He paused. "Look – there's this doctor I know at Georgetown who owes me big time. She does brain stuff, I can –"

"I thought you said you hated me."

"I do. But you aren't Barnes, and he isn't you. Did he really have a panic attack trying to say 'no'?"

"Why do you care?" Steve snapped.

"I've had 'em too, Cap. They suck dick. That's a different kind of sucking dick than you know about."

"Stark..."

"Come _on_ , Rogers. Don't try and say you don't know anything about that. _Bisexual_. Were you ever gonna tell us?"

"Who is 'us'?"

"Us! Avengers, those people you saved the world with!"

"It wasn't the whole world, just Manhattan. And I'm not really a fan of that borough."

"Yeah – but c'mon, we're friends –"

"We're not into friend territory yet, Tony."

Stark huffed. "I hacked into the FBI for you."

"I've taken bullets for the people I fight with but that doesn't mean I considered them friends."

"You're weird."

"You're not a soldier."

"Whatever. So, the Georgetown doc."

"Don't bother, not yet anyway. I'm laying low till the government makes their call."

"No one's gonna prosecute him, Rogers."

"Technically he'd be court-martialed, and I'm worried more about interrogations and exams than being arrested."

"Lawyers could get him out of those but maybe not an arrest warrant. I'm guessing if that happened you'd say something along the lines of 'over my dead body' and as much as I love dramatic statements I know of some spooks who'd take that literally."

"They could try."

"And there's the man my dad told stories about. Any chance the asshole second-in-command will be making an appearance anytime soon?"

"I don't think so."

"So – what, does he just not talk or –"

"No, he talks. If you talk to him. He doesn't initiate. But considering what Hydra did to him..."

"I wouldn't want to talk either. Okay, so in case you didn't know, basically every government agency and a few international ones were watching that interrogation and now they're all calling me, _and_ I've got a girlfriend who's throwing a fit –"

"I am not throwing a fit, Tony!" said someone who Steve assumed that was Pepper Potts. "They went after your parents, they can go after you too! And, hi, Captain. I'm sorry about your friend. Honey, the building's security –"

"– is fine, I already told you, but I'm sure Happy will _love_ to post a security guard at every –"

"– door and that'd be a huge waste of money! We have to be smarter about –"

"– security in the Tower, which I get, which is why I was gonna ask Cap if he had plans to patch the bullet holes in that apartment of his or whether he'd –"

"– just want to move up here. But there's a target on his back – and Barnes, I mean, Rogers isn't gonna leave him wherever he is now and there's no way Hydra won't want to –"

"– get to him and the safest place then would be –"

"– here, except not because –"

"– our security measures apparently don't meet your wonderfully _insane_ standards, and I will accept payment on rent from Cap if he fixes them! And by seeing if this alcohol Bruce cooked up works on him, we've been messing with half-life of the chemicals that yeast –"

"Thanks, Tony," Steve cut in, "but I can't give you an answer right now."

"I'll bug you about it later. What'd you want with this recording? I could've just taken it off the FBI servers later, you know."

Confession time: "I know. But obviously I needed you to watch it live. Send me a copy, I can annotate the KGB file with it. And if the FBI does something stupid –"

"– and by stupid you mean something you don't like –"

"– then I can release it. Just like SHIELD's files."

"Blackmail the feds. I didn't think Captain America would go that far."

"I would if I had to, but I wasn't thinking about blackmail. I'd just post it somewhere. Let the government do whatever they want to do publicly."

"You must love the internet."

Yes, he really did. "It has its uses," he admitted. "Just to be clear about what happened to –"

"Hydra killed my parents. I'm not stupid enough to blame Barnes for this, Cap. Any gun can kill someone, it's the guy who shoots the gun that you should go after."

"I didn't know you were philosophical."

"Just one of those stupid things I read on that internet you love so much. Oh, by the way, tell Sharon Carter to go screw herself."

" _What_?"

"She called Wilson, you were in with a doc, we chatted. She said she was helping you with something, called in a favor to keep me from prying so I wouldn't figure out it was this. Which is how I know you lied to Pierce about how you found Barnes. How'd it really go down?"

"That's a story for a different time."

"Why, is it gonna piss me off more?"

"Maybe."

"Yeah, tell it to me later then. Even my never-ending pit of hatred thinks I'm reaching my limit for today."

Potts cut in, "More like his vocal chords can't take any more yelling at the TV screen. It's been four hours and I haven't gotten _anything_ done."

"That long?" asked Steve. "It didn't feel that long."

"You didn't have a watch. And we're not going out tonight, Tony, I need to finish this work."

"C'mon, Pepper, I –"

" _Goodbye_ , Cap. If you need a lawyer just call me."

"Thanks."


	6. April 14–16, 2014

_I'm going to set a reminder to myself to post because I always forget on Monday evening and remember the next morning._

 _Anyway._

* * *

Apparently Tony Stark was "fine" with the situation. He'd even offered to help, or so Steve claimed.

Bucky didn't think Stark should be okay with the situation. He thought he should be angry.

Then again, he'd only heard about the interrogation, not seen it, and maybe Pierce had said something that got Stark's attention. Maybe Stark hated Pierce, not him.

Steve returned around the time Wilson – Sam – finished the physical exam and they'd spent a while talking about whatever Pierce had said. Bucky voluntarily walked away from that conversation, picking up one of the newer books Ben had lent him and going to the next room.

"Buck."

He put the book down and looked up at Steve.

"Um... we need to see your left foot."

 _That's random._ "Why?"

"Something Pierce said. We just need to confirm it."

He unlaced his shoes and pulled off his socks. Wilson had asked him if it was okay to look at his feet but Bucky had hesitated – the ground was concrete here, not like Ben's soft wood and carpet, and he had bad memories of walking on cold ground barefoot – and the other man hadn't pressed it.

"He was right," said Wilson now. "Can I?"

Bucky nodded. Wilson – _Sam_ – took his foot and pointed at something on the sole. "I saw those before, treating POWs in Iraq. It's an interrogation technique but it can be modified just to cause pain. 'Cuz torture – for information, at least – if you put the subject through too much pain they'll just shut down. They can't think about anything else. But these bigger ones..."

Sam pressed on part of the sole and Bucky jerked his foot back in the milliseconds before his mind went blank.

"...an uncommon reaction to trauma."

The words pulled him back to himself, and the pounding headache he had.

The clock on the wall said it'd been three minutes, and now Steve and Sam were sitting down opposite his cushy chair. He looked down and saw the roundish scars on his sole – and some had matching tissue on the top of his foot –

"Those were the nails," explained Sam, speaking to him now. "Zola made some notes – sort of like an appendix for the file – and apparently a lot of the conditioning involved making you stand still in whatever position till they told you not to. Pierce said when you were more resistant they'd... do something to you to keep you in place physically. 'Parently once they nailed your foot to the ground."

Bucky put a left-hand finger on a scar near his pinky toe, on the top of his foot, and felt the corresponding round shape on the bottom. Again for one in the center, and near the heel, and the second toe. He pushed in and froze – but only for a second, and when he released the pressure he relaxed again.

Anywhere without the scars, or even the ones that weren't from the nails, didn't make him react like that.

"I don't remember that," he whispered.

Sam replied seriously, "Well, Pierce and the file haven't lied yet."

 _Oh. Okay._

Should he be worried or relieved that they had documented everything? He didn't know.

"Ben and Sharon think he'd dissociate on missions," said Steve.

"That makes sense. It's a more extreme version of what the military teaches you to do in combat. That's part of the reason why vets have a hard time adjusting back to civilian life – there's no training to fall back on."

"I remember. That was hard. So is that... part of the reason he's not active?"

They were talking about him in third-person again. He didn't mind but he did think it was weird how easily they did it. Hydra had done that; these people were supposed to be different.

These people _were_ different – this was Steve. And besides, he'd talked about Steve with doctors before, in the same room as him. It was because he cared.

Another vague memory, another thing he knew but didn't know why or how. He hated it.

Bucky picked his book back up and split his mind in two: reading and listening.

"Probably. Part of it also might've been the 'only exists to kill people' thing, which meant that his personal needs were deprioritized. But he's figuring out he can assert himself, make his own choices. We took a break from the exam for lunch and – I gotta be honest, I wasn't too thrilled about making food for him and –"

"I get it. Have I said thank you yet?"

"Only about fifty times. Yeah, so I put some peas and a box of mac and cheese on the counter and told him to go crazy and he figured it out. He put half the peas in the pasta and kept the other half frozen – when I asked him he said he didn't know which one he liked better so he did both. He also found two more boxes and made those too, so it ended up that _he_ made _me_ lunch."

 _He looked tired. I thought he shouldn't have to do more work. And the peas taste better in the pasta._

"Yeah. That's what he was like before all this." There was a smile in Steve's voice, and he cleared his throat before saying, "So, before my dead best friend showed up on his brother's doorstep, we had a vague plan to, uh..."

"Kick Hydra ass?"

A laugh. "Yeah. Something like that. But if you're, y'know, if you didn't want to leave what you have here..."

"No, man, I'm still on board. I actually thought you'd be busy, y'know, with..."

"Well – yeah. But I figure it might help sometimes if I wasn't around. Not be smothering, if that's the right word." A pause. "What?"

"I can tell you that you're already thinking about this better than half the vet spouses I've talked to."

"Oh. Thanks. Though the comparison is maybe not..."

"Accurate? Sharon messaged me through the whole interrogation. It's twenty-fourteen, Steve. The courts've been overturning gay marriage bans left and right for six months. I'm not... homophobic. Biphobic, I think that's the right term. They're actually different."

Bucky froze again, but this time it was different – his brain was swarmed with thoughts, panic and alarm because _how did Sam Wilson know about that_?

"I didn't think you were. You never know, but I didn't get that impression. For the record, we were never..."

He hadn't even remembered it till the word "homophobic" because it sounded like "homosexual" and Steve was halfway to that –

"Well you'll have to be shouting that from the rooftops now. Even with Pierce saying you never did anything, people are gonna wonder –"

– Pierce knew?

Oh God, he'd told him, and of course he'd tell the world out of spite –

And now everyone in the government knew. The president knew, the army knew... and it'd get out eventually and if Steve leaked the video like he told Sam he might...

"Sam, I need the room."

Was it really that obvious how panicked he was?

"Yeah, 'course."

"Buck – _Bucky_ –"

Steve pulled his chair up so that he was facing him, and leaned forward. He shook Bucky's shoulder and said, "It's okay, it's legal. What Sam mentioned, about the courts – Sweet Mary, how do I explain this..."

He rubbed his forehead with his free hand and took a deep breath, mirroring the ones Bucky himself was taking to try to calm down.

"It's legal now. A lot of people still don't like it but just as many people are fine with it. They got rid of the ban in the military, and now all these state courts are saying that marriage is a right...

"It's _all right_. Honestly I'm relieved. So don't worry about it, and don't worry how it got out."

Steve was lying. He could tell – the little grimace he made when he said he was relieved. He wasn't happy, he was terrified and regretting ever having talked to Pierce.

Sometimes Bucky wished people would just tell him what he knew they were really thinking. This time, though, he decided to say something about it. "Liar."

"Okay, yeah. Maybe I am. But that doesn't mean it's your fault. And I'll get used to it eventually. Okay?"

He kept his best friend's gaze for a long moment, just to make sure he wasn't upset, and finally he nodded. _Okay_.

"Great. Panic attack averted."

"They're not panic attacks."

"That's the word Ben used."

"Sam says they're anxiety attacks."

"There's a difference?"

" 'Parently."

"Well, he knows more about them. _Anxiety_ attack averted."

Steve gave him a little grin – encouraging, questioning – and Bucky couldn't help but smile a little before the grimace took over. "Yeah. I guess."

"All right. I'll make something for dinner when you finish the book."

He walked away, out of the room, leaving Bucky to wonder yet again why Steve was so upbeat. Pierce never made _anyone_ feel happy.

* * *

Sharon came by the next morning, and Wilson stood up straight when he saw her and said, "Ma'am."

"I'm not in uniform," she pointed out.

"You're the closest you can be to being in uniform without actually being in uniform."

"Thank you. That's the idea." She looked around the safehouse – bunker, whatever the original designer have called it – kitchen and told him, "I'm looking for Steve. I have a few things to check up on with you, though."

"Shoot."

"You're a group counselor at the VA in DC, right?"

"Yup."

She pulled out a pad of paper from her bag – a briefcase with a strap, an old thing of her father's that she'd gotten when he retired – and found a pen. "Okay. Official position?"

"Peer Specialist. GS-5."

"Based out of?"

"Meade."

She scribbled "FT Meade MD" on the paper. "Education?"

Wilson raised his brows. "That's necessary?"

"I like to be prepared when I go up against the government."

"Just wondering how much you needed. University of New Orleans, Air Force ROTC, class of ninety-seven."

"Grew up down there?"

"Yup. Lost most of my accent on tour but" – his tone shifted, his vowels elongating and his Rs fading – "I reckon it's a good idea to keep it handy. It comes out when I'm distracted or drunk, or rankled. And daggonit if I'll let my folks hear the east-coast accent I use 'round these parts."

Sharon assumed Aunt Peggy's polished British accent: "Very good, soldier. Changing one's voice to suit their environment is a rather useful skill to have. What course of study did you pursue in university?"

Sam grinned and informed her – he kept the thick Louisiana accent – that he was pre-med. He'd planned to go to go to medical school after serving his four years but then he was tapped for pararescue with a friend.

"Where is he now?"

"Arlington. Near the Carillon."

She looked up from her writing and said, "Oh. I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Got hit pretty hard when he died so there went my plans for med school. 'Course it qualified me for my current job so there's that."

Sharon finished her questions about Sam's background and expertise and asked him for a rough assessment of Bucky's mental state.

"Mind, I'm not a doctor and I don't counsel friends or friends of friends," he told her.

"I am aware. However I need something when I approach the relevant government officials"

"Aight. I'll talk slow so you can get all of it."

"Go ahead."

His accent faded back into a dull east-coast tone as he spoke: "He has severe memory loss. He can't remember anything that happened after he joined the military and has vague memories of his childhood and early adulthood. He experiences flashbacks to events that happened when he was in Hydra and sometimes will be nonresponsive for minutes when that happens. He has several trigger phrases that we know about that cause him to dissociate but only one has worked more than once, so they were probably use-in-case-of-emergency. Irritating certain scars – probably the ones that happened under more traumatic conditions – will also cause him to dissociate.

"He doesn't initiate conversation or everyday activities. He has very little concept of his own comfort but he does express minor personal preferences. If you explicitly say he can do something he will feel comfortable doing it, though usually you have to walk him through how to – hey. You're up early."

Sharon turned and found Bucky standing in the doorway that she supposed let to sleeping quarters. "Oh, hi. We can move to another room if you want to eat breakfast and not have to hear about this."

No response. He walked over the refrigerator and pulled out the milk carton.

"Do you mind if we stay?" she asked. "Do you want us to leave?"

Bucky found the cereal and a bowl. Sharon took a guess and tried: "Can we stay?"

"Yeah."

"All right. Keep going, Sam."

Wilson continued to recount his observations, though in a lower voice.

"In summary..." she said when he was finished.

"Severe PTSD, definitely. It's an anxiety disorder, it explains the anxiety attacks. He has a chance of developing depression even with treatment. And then there's the induced amnesia and conditioning."

"Brainwashing?"

"Not that I can tell, actually. Just very strong, brutal conditioning."

"All right. I already got Ben's medical observations but I'll need your notes too."

"Got it."

She went back to her English accent and asked, "Are there any necessities you find lacking in this safehouse?"

"Nah, there's enough canned food to feed an army. By my reckoning the two of 'em should be good here for another couple weeks. I'm not planning on stickin' around that long."

"That's perfectly understandable."

She glanced back at Bucky and couldn't help but laugh at his bewildered expression. "Oh, Buck, we're –" She composed herself. "We are practicing the different speech patterns we can assume in times when disguising our identities would be needed. I of course learned a British accent from my aunt –"

"– and I'm from Nawlins, 'course I've an accent."

Bucky looked between them, said a simple "Uhuh" and pulled out a book to read.

Sharon and Sam talked for a few minutes, still in accent, until the former dropped the funny talk and said, "Hey, Bucky, is Steve still asleep?"

"Last I checked."

"All right, I won't bother him then. Either of you, or both, let him know I went in. And, Sam – one last thing."

"Shoot."

"You live in McLean. I'm probably gonna have a good number of tails on me, and I don't have an apartment anymore..."

"I have a guest room. I dunno if it's made but you're welcome to use it."

"The house is in your sister's name, though. Everything with Hydra happened too quickly for anyone to figure out you lived there and I'm pretty sure they still don't know."

"Right, yeah. I have a PO box 'cuz my mailman's shitty."

"And the military drags their feet on records. But if I stay there they'll definitely know."

Sam shrugged. "I reckon they'll figure it out anyways. Let me give you a key and the security code."

"Thanks."

* * *

Sharon took a roundabout route to the Fort Totten Metro station, getting off at Metro Center, and dialed Tony Stark's number from her regular cellphone once she had reception.

"Has Cap told you to go screw yourself yet?"

"And a good day to you, Tony. No, he hasn't. Probably has something to do with how he's a figurative boy scout and also a former army captain..."

" 'Figurative'?"

"He doesn't like it when people call him a boy scout. Teasing in general, really. Might want to keep that in mind for the future. Anyway, I need you to get me on the phone with the president."

The person next to her going through the faregate gave her an odd look, and she replied with a mind-your-own-business glare.

"I haven't heard from him yet, Sharon. The FBI's a better –"

"Yeah, but I figure I might as well go straight to the top given the topic."

"You know they can trace your phone."

"Oh, I know. The call is a heads up that he should clear his morning schedule. I'm going to the White House right now."

"Y'know I can't say I'm surprised."

"Are you gonna do it or not?"

"Yeah, yeah. Gimme a few seconds."

Tony came back on the line just before she hit the top of the escalator. "Yeah, so, here she is, sir."

Sharon couldn't remember the last time she'd heard him say "sir" to anyone.

"This is President Ellis."

"Sharon Carter, sir. Formerly of SHIELD. I'm calling because Captain America asked me to follow up with you regarding the interview he did yesterday for the FBI."

The same man as before – now on the escalator to her right – was staring with his mouth open. She sped-walked off the escalator and out of the station.

"Did he now."

"Yes. I can show you what I have in-person but I should inform you that it'll take a while."

"How long is 'a while'?"

"At least until noon, if you can see me soon."

"I can have you picked up at – what address?"

"Nice try, sir. I'm a block away from the East Wing."

"All right. Give your name to security on Pennsylvania Avenue and they'll bring you in."

"Excellent. Thank you, sir."

She hung up, pulled her dress shoes out of her bag and bent down in the entrance area to a closed shop to change shoes. No one sane wore heels on the Metro, or sneakers when they saw the president.

* * *

Stark and Sharon called a few times, one on the larger phone and the other on the plainer-looking phone. From what Bucky could gather Stark had appointed himself a go-between for Steve and the government – something about tracking phone calls; and Sharon was presenting evidence, like the recording she'd made of his account of the helicarrier fight, to the Attorney General and something called "CID".

One call was different: Steve put it on speaker, for one, and insisted that Bucky listen; for another, both Sharon and Stark were on the line. It had been two days, or so Steve's phone said, since Pierce's interrogation and the government already had an offer.

 _Offer for what?_

"I really don't understand what the big deal is," said a man whose voice he didn't remember. "This would be much more convenient to do in person –"

"Yeah, you'd like that, General," said Stark. "Then he could just lead you right to –"

"That is a ridiculous accu –"

Sharon cut in, "It's what I would do in your situation. I would also come up with excuses like, _how do I guarantee that I'm talking to Captain Rogers instead of someone else_ , or, _we need physical proof that Barnes is alive_. Stark can vouch for the first one, and I for the second. I would advise you, Major General, to accept that you're not going to see Barnes until we've confirmed a deal for him."

 _Oh. This is about my life._

He looked over at Steve and saw him smiling a little, though there was no trace of it in his voice when he said, "Just tell us the offer, General."

"Detainment at a military hospital. It's in the best interests of everyone that Barnes be kept where he's not a potential threat to anyone, including himself. He'll be questioned" – Steve frowned, followed by Sam shaking his head – "regarding what acts he committed for Hydra. And if he cooperates –"

"How long a detainment?" Sharon asked.

"Indefinite."

"Well, that sounds like a great time," said Stark sarcastically.

"Given the seriousness of the crimes and the seriousness of the risk that Hydra poses to our national security, we have to act quickly and keep any possible threats contained."

"Which is even more incentive for us to get this done with sooner than later," Sharon told him. "The president dragging his feet on a serious deal isn't in his best interest."

"Is that a threat?"

"No, it's an observation. When you want people to put their lives on hold to do your work for you, you have to give them something."

"This is Captain America!"

"And this is the only thing he's asking for!"

"The US government does not accommodate terrorism –"

"No one here's a terrorist."

"Barnes could fall under that category."

"Where'd you get that from?"

"He killed John F Kennedy –"

"– _under duress_ , just like everything else Hydra made him do."

A pause, and then Stark said, "You're not getting any backup from over here."

"Look – Hydra's the public's biggest boogeyman since Bin Laden. The last thing we can do right now is look like we're going soft on those people!"

"Did you miss the part where he was only one of 'those people' because of Zola's mind wiping machine?"

"Of anyone, Stark, I would expect that you would understand the –"

"– effects that kidnapping, serious injury and captivity can have on a person. Yeah, I do understand."

Obviously Bucky was missing something that everyone else knew.

 _– Stark and that infernal suit of his. If he doesn't stop soon he might uncover another one of our satellite groups – Yes, I understand, Malick, but that doesn't mean it'll necessarily **work**._

He shook his head. Pierce's voice kept popping up in his memory – words, phrases, descriptions of events that he shouldn't have known about except that his handlers had mentioned them.

He caught Steve looking over at him, concerned, and he shrugged. _I'll tell you later_.

"Captain?" the General asked.

Steve looked once more at Bucky, and then back down at the phone. "You can do better than that."

"Look, I have – I have the Interim Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General _and_ President Ellis dictating what I can and cannot offer. I'm just the messenger –"

"Then apparently the president didn't get the message. Tell him that I'll be happy to talk to him personally. Clear up any misunderstandings about what I'm asking for."

He tapped the end call button on the screen. "Maybe negotiation isn't my strong suit," he admitted.

"It never has been," muttered Bucky. He thought the deal was perfectly reasonable but then again he also supposed Steve knew more about this than he did.

Sam sighed and stood up. "Okay. I gotta get back home."

"Go ahead. Thanks, again."

Bucky returned to the sleeping room, where he'd left the book he was reading – a new one he'd started a few hours before. Sam said he read quickly.

Steve stayed and he heard him say goodbye to Wilson, and then follow Bucky into the other room. He poked his friend in the knee and asked, "What's your opinion on New York?"

"City or upstate?"

"City."

"It's a big place."

"What about upstate?"

"Also a big place."

Steve sighed. "I keep forgetting this is how you were. What d'you think about _living_ in New York City?"

"I said, it's a big place." _I need more information_.

"Oh. Right. Manhattan."

Bucky vaguely recalled that that was the borough that thought it was better than all the other ones, and made a face.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But I just got an open invitation to move there."

"How're you leaning?"

"Towards yes. Told 'em I'd think about it."

He frowned. "I thought that meant you were gonna say... er, turn 'em down."

"Usually. But I had to talk to you first."

"...Why?"

" 'Cuz I'm not leaving you here. And it wouldn't be right now – we have to clear things up with the feds."

Bucky nodded. "Stark lives in Manhattan."

"Yeah, I know. He's the one who offered. You heard him on the phone," Steve continued when the frown on his best friend's face deepened. "He told me himself, he _hates_ me right now but I'm not you and you aren't me. Apparently he also has panic attacks. Probably has something to do with New York – the battle, not the place – yeah he almost died on the other end of the universe and barely made it back through the wormhole after Romanoff shut down the Tesseract machine with Loki's – _what_?"

He'd balanced his book on his knee, pushing it around in a circle as Steve talked. "You're rambling."

"Yeah, I do that when the person I'm talking to won't say anything."

Bucky nodded but didn't reply.

"Buck, c'mon. Do you want to go to New York?"

"Manhattan," he said quietly.

"Manhattan. You gotta give me something here."

Bucky caught Steve glaring at him – not seriously, more like teasing – and smiled a little in return.

"All right. Let's go to Manhattan."

* * *

 _The Netherlands Carillon is right next to Arlington National Cemetery, so what Sam means is that his friend is dead._

 _USACIDC (CID for short) is the Army's investigative crime "command". It's headed by a Major General. If you know about the show NCIS, this is the Army's equivalent._

 _Anthony Mackie is from New Orleans, so I decided Sam Wilson would be too._

 _Ten points to whoever can write up tweets for the guy on the metro._


	7. Epilogue (October 2015)

_Last chapter a little early because I guarantee you I would forget to post it till Tuesday morning otherwise._

 _I'm going to be inactive for a few months after this, because I still have my big fic to finish, but feel free to talk to me. I'll be busy, not dead :P  
_

* * *

 _I hope you guys enjoyed this fic! It was certainly very fun to write.  
_

 _Ultron gets pushed back a half-year, because idgaf about canon._

 _References for this fic are here: [_ _bit] [.ly] /21srP2O_

* * *

Rosa's boyfriend sometimes slept on his right arm. Unfortunately for her, he also liked to sleep on the left side of the bed – away from the window – so if she wanted any kind of physical contact she had to bring herself up against his back.

The first time she'd done it he'd tensed up and she had begun to withdraw, but he caught her arm and pulled her back to him. He was big and warm, and those were two things Rosa could appreciate in a boyfriend even if she'd have rathered _her_ back be to _his_ chest instead of the other way around.

Most of the time, though, he slept on his chest and his right arm would find itself hugging her belly. It was protective but not possessive, and she thought it was very sweet.

He also kept his left arm as far away from her as possible, which was acceptably protective as well but also annoying because, as she kept telling him, _she didn't give a shit that it was made of metal_.

Finally he'd told her that he'd done a lot of things with that arm that he wasn't going to forget about, and he'd like it to stay far, far away from her if possible.

Okay. So that was something she couldn't argue with.

Still, it was a very useful arm. Rosa's coworkers at the restaurant hadn't warmed up to him until a turkey caught fire one night when she was on break in the back with him, and he walked right into the kitchen and pulled the dish out of the oven without a mitt or wet dishrag. Saving the restaurant from evacuating on one of their busiest nights of the week endeared him to basically everyone.

He also did his pushups one-handed, and if he used his left arm she could sit on his back and count for him. He told her it didn't _do_ anything – it wasn't like he burned any energy or built any muscle – it was a prosthetic after all – but she still enjoyed doing it.

In short, as she had explained to her best friend, he didn't have a problem using it – in bed, even – but when he was asleep it was different. He hadn't truly slept at all, apparently, through all seventy years of Hydra and she supposed he wanted to dream without worrying he'd hurt her accidentally.

She reflected on all of that in the time between when the ringing woke her up and when he found his phone on the floor next to his side of the bed.

He picked the stupid thing with his left hand and transferred it to his right, and answered. He quickly sat up and said, "What? Steve, slow down – What d'you mean, the scepter's gone? We just got it – How 'bout you start from the beginning."

Bucky got out of bed and walked around in the dark, probably looking for his pants. "What's the big deal with that? They never tell us about those projects. They're just projects."

Rosa watched him hold up his pants and stare at them for a moment before thinking up a solution to his problem. He found his earpiece on her bedside table – he liked to keep it with him though apparently no one else did – well, no one else kept five knives on themselves either except for Natasha – and put it in, tapped the phone against his ear and replaced it on the table.

"What? Without telling us – Yeah, yeah, okay, I get it. What happened?"

He pulled on the pants – "Fuck – _Fuck_. Is anyone hurt?" – and looked around for his shirt. "Okay. What's this about Thor?"

Shirt on, he sat down to pull on his socks. "Well, he did. Him and Banner. _Fuck_ , this might be my fault – I was supposed to have Stark's back in Sokovia. He got ahead of me, got to the scepter first. I saw the Maximoff kids on the side – I tried to be quiet, sneak up on them but the girl noticed me and they got out of there."

Bucky glanced at Rosa – she'd propped herself up on her side of the bed to watch him putting his clothes on – and said, "Not disagreeing with you there, but Stark was just _standing_ in front of the scepter. He wasn't – he was frozen, and he was staring in front of him like... Like he was hallucinating. I couldn't break it with my voice so I had to shake his shoulder. He looked... weird after that. Freaked out, but he wouldn't tell me was wrong. I said I'd take the scepter but didn't even turn me down, just took it himself."

He took her left hand with his right and rubbed it gently. "I think that the Maximoff girl did something to him, made him scared enough to pull this shit with Ultron without telling us."

Rosa sat up fully, took his hand and pressed the front of her palm into his forearm. Heavy pressure and rhythmic motion helped him relax.

" 'Course he wouldn't, you're all mad at him right now. 'A hallucination made me do it' doesn't cut it most of the time. So has there been any damage so far?" He groaned at the reply. "It's been... three hours since the afterparty? – That was fast. Sharon's contacted Langley, right?"

A grimace. "I thought the point of computers was that we _didn't_ have to deal with hours of research anymore – Those weren't fun, Steve. You were sick when you had to write most of yours so I did all your research – Yeah, 'cuz you were sick. I wasn't gonna be in the library while you coughed up a lung."

She gave him a curious look and he rolled his eyes. "Okay, _blood_. That's close enough. I can be back there in thirty – I'm being generous. And I like being early. Bye."

Bucky leaned over and tapped his phone to end the call.

"What happened?" Rosa asked him. He sighed, leaned over and kissed her deeply instead of replying immediately.

No, this wasn't good at all.

"Last week, at the Sokovia base... we found the scepter that Loki used in the Battle of New York. Apparently Hydra got their hands on it. They were using it for experiments, and it worked on two people. Twins. The Maximoffs."

"So they were brainwashed?"

"Volunteers."

"Who would...?"

"Hydra's good at this," he told her. "It's how they get a lot of their recruits. They find whatever you're angry about and they exploit that, tell you they can fix it. And if you don't know better it works. Point you at someone they want dead and tell you they're your enemy."

She'd heard all this before – how Hydra turned him into a weapon, suppressed his memories and desensitized him to abuse and terror. And no matter how many times she and Steve – hell, everyone – told him it wasn't his fault, he still carried the guilt of what he'd done with him.

She'd read the transcript of Pierce's interrogation too but had never had the stomach to watch the video – leaked after the president refused to grant a pardon, though public pressure had forced him to change his mind about that – and preferred not to hear the details of the many Hydra bases her boyfriend had uncovered with his teammates in the last six months, since he'd joined in on field operations.

Rosa reached over to take his left hand and squeezed it, hard. He could feel the direct force but not any movement along the surface, she knew, so he wouldn't register that she was holding his hand until she pressed the plates down. He replied with a squeeze of his own and let his breath out.

"These kids lost their parents in the civil war I started. Hydra probably used that, convinced them they could protect their country if they volunteered for the experiments. 'Course they wouldn't know that Hydra was behind all the fighting. The girl's got telepathy and telekinetics, and the boy's got super-speed. If they're involved in this, like I think they are..."

"What happens to them now?"

"We'll make them know better, or they'll die."

That was extreme. "Bucky..."

"It sounds bad but this _is_ bad, Rosa. Gifted people and Hydra is the worst combination imaginable and we can't afford to have these kids running free. It's what I was planning on looking into after we finished with the scepter anyway. And the girl's already gotten into one of our heads..."

He leaned forward and rested his forehead on her shoulder. "It just feels like they'll never be gone."

"It's only been a year and a half. It'll take time."

"I know... I just feel like I can't handle it sometimes."

"Then stop hunting them down twenty-four seven."

"I can't do that. I know what they've done, I can't..."

No, he really couldn't. He'd be chasing ghosts until it killed him, and Rosa wasn't sure either of them could reconcile themselves to that future. At least he was honest about his goals; at least he wasn't like her aunt and uncle, saying _one more business and if this one fails we'll be done for real_.

 _One more base and I'll be done_ – a lie he'd never told her.

Rosa had a feeling this mess would be one of the harder ones. "How 'bout taking a break after this one?"

He looked up and blinked. "How long of a break?"

"Depends on how rough it is."

"Two gifted, that'll be pretty rough."

"So a while. A few weeks, at least. Quality time. Visit your brother, go to some museums."

"Sounds like a plan." A pause. "I should go. They're pulling out the paper records."

"Yeah, I heard. You know how funny it is to hear you complaining about that?"

"In-person library research is mind-numbing like you can't believe. Sure, I can speed-read like a pro but a little of you dies with every page you turn. I guarantee you I'll forget _again_ that paper files don't have a control-F function."

She rolled her eyes. "You're being melodramatic."

" _Hardly_."

Rosa threw up her hands in a gesture of giving up, made an annoyed noise and let him kiss her neck.

"Steve says he's sorry for pulling me away like this."

"He always is, but that never stops him."

"That's 'cuz he knows I'd kick his ass if he didn't tell me what's going on. It's still my choice to go, Rosa."

She sighed, cupped his cheek and kissed him on the mouth. "I know. Come back in one piece, please."

"I'll do my best. I love you."

"I love you too. Now go save the world."

He replied softly, "Yes, ma'am."


End file.
